1. What is the problem or question(s) this research concerns? You should be able to identify the central focus. If there are additional secondary problems, identify these too.
2. What is the source of the data? (That is, questionnaire, intensive interview, documents, existing statistical information, observations, laboratory manipulations, field manipulations, etc.) In some studies there are two or more sources of data. Give a brief overview of how the data were acquired.
3. When articles list more than two hypotheses or goals, it can be difficult to decide which is most important. Think about the central purpose or argument of the article (usually found in the introduction). Four common approaches lead to long lists of implicit or explicit hypotheses or questions.
4. Definition of the population of theoretical or substantive interest; a) What is the population of theoretical or substantive interest; that is, to whom does the author seem to want to be able to generalize? Your answer to this should be based on what the author says in the introduction to the article, not in the methods section.
5. Geographic areas, organizational units (e.g. what state, University, county), or other primary sampling units and how these were chosen. Was the sampling of these units probability or nonprobability?;
6. The sampling units (e.g. people, organizations, sentences). These may or may not be the same as the units of analysis;
7. What kind of sample (e.g., convenience, stratified random, etc.) does this seem to be?
8. Response rate (e.g., to a mailed survey) and sample size; if analyzed sample size is different from initial sample size (e.g., cases were dropped for missing data) explain why.
9. Does the author discuss any shortcoming in the sample or the sampling procedures? If so, what does s/he say?
10. To what population can the results of this research be generalized? To what population would you feel reasonably confident the results probably apply? Why? At what point would you be very hesitant to apply these results?
11. What are the best clinical/community practices approaches offered?
12. What social policy is discussed in the article and why? Explain its significance in great detail.
13. What are the policy practices offered?
14. Give your overall evaluation of the methods used in this article: what things were done well? what were done poorly? How much trust do you put in the findings?
15. Look at this article’s “packaging,” that is, the theoretical introduction and the discussion or interpretation at the end. Do you feel that the actual methods and results support the theoretical and interpretive claims of the author? Why?
16. What possible ethical issues might have arisen in the process of doing this research? Do you think the researcher’s ethical decisions were all justified, or are some questionable? Why?
17. To sum up, what do you feel you’ve learned worth knowing from this article? (Your answer should not be ‘nothing’.) (Please note: this question is about the article and refers to the quality of information it contains.)
18. Tell me anything you would like me to know about your experiences doing this analysis, or any suggestions you have for future revisions of this assignment.
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