You will write a critical review of the selected article that focuses on the purpose, your overall reaction, salient methodological issues, noteworthy weaknesses and strengths, and an overall recommendation. See tips below for how to critique a scholarly article.

Think about each of the decisions they made in designing the study, and what they concluded from the results. Were these good design decisions? Were the conclusions reasonable? What are possible problems with the design, sampling, measurements, and so on? How likely are these problems? How would they impact on the results and conclusions?
(1) The Research Question.

How does the author justify the importance of this question to the scholarly community?

How does the author demonstrate that the question remains unanswered? What prior research on this question is mentioned and what is the author’s explanation of why answers provided by the prior research are inadequate or are addressing a gap in the literature?

(2) Literature Review

Has the author examined the relevant literature on the topic and persuasively explained why the research question posed has not yet been satisfactorily answered? An author does not need to include all literature, but should discuss what the field holds to be the most recent and salient investigations of the topic.

(3) Research Approach/Methods

How does the author explain and justify the contribution s/he will make with the research? What research approach /study design used – is it appropriate? Are any sampling issues involved / discussed? How was the sample selected and is it appropriate? What is the population about which generalizations are drawn and do the cases examined justify such a generalization?

(4) Operationalizing Variables

Has the author produced a novel conceptualization or operationalization that deserves applause, used some measures you think are doubtful, or just presented what they are going to do without any logical explanation of why?

How is each variable conceptualized and operationalized? Did the author develop the conceptual / operational definition herself, borrow it from a specific theory of prior research, or simply refer to it as a variable commonly used in the discipline? Is the operational definition/s valid?

Are the hypotheses clear? What is the author’s rationale for expecting the independent variables to be related to the dependent variable? Is this logic persuasive to you? Are the operationalizations of the variables consistent with this logic? For example, if the author talks about a college / non-college education association to cancer screenings, is the variable operationalized as this dichotomy or as a continuous variable reflecting years of education?

Is the direction of the relationship discussed and / or clear? Is it likely that relationship direction might flow in ways not discussed by the author, from the dependent variable to the independent variable or between independent variables?

Are any variables introduced primarily to control for their confounding effects? Which ones? What is the explanation given for why they might have a confounding effect? Are there other confounding variables you can think of that the author ignores? Alternatively, if the authors contend no controls are necessary is their reasoning persuasive to you?

(5) Analytic Approach
What statistical technique does the author use? Based on the questions being asked and the data available, is this an appropriate technique? Do the authors discuss the assumptions of the technique?

(6) Findings
What did the author find as the result of the research? Which findings were expected or unexpected? Are you persuaded that the inferences drawn from the research about the hypotheses are valid?

(7) Limitations
Are the limitations discussed thoroughly? What other limitations can you identify?

(8) Conclusions and Recommendations
What does the author suggest, if anything, as possibilities for future research? Is the author’s argument understandable? Are the arguments presented logically and coherently? Is the paper well organized so you can easily follow how the research was conducted and why?

Pick out a few MAIN POINTS OR CONCEPTS that you think are most important in reading this study critically. Examples of these sorts of concepts are: sample size, bias in measurement of outcome, loss to follow-up, unrepresentative subjects, etc