Complete a worksheet that distills critical information in a scholarly article and compares it to information in a popular press article.
This assessment is designed to help you describe scientific research methods as presented in scholarly psychological literature. It will also help you learn to differentiate between scholarly and non-scholarly sources. By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:
Psychology is often viewed as a career in which the professionals become therapists in order to treat mental health issues. In fact, psychology is a broad and diverse science that offers a wide variety of career options and opportunities. Because psychology is considered a science, learners must understand the concept of systematic behavioral observation and the scientific process.The goals of psychology are to describe, understand, predict, and change or control behavior. Part of psychology is helping people, families, groups, and social situations make changes for the better. If you think about it, control is essential to functioning in a social and cultural world. Imagine cities with no traffic signals or children being permitted to wander aimlessly around streets. This would be a chaotic and scary world. Thus, we want to be able to manage human behavior in ways that are productive and helpful without being exploitive or damaging.
Because human behavior is so remarkable, psychologists also get to choose to study from a wide variety of specialties. For example, psychologists can specialize in childhood or adult development; learning; biopsychology; clinical, organizational, or health psychology; or many other areas. You name it, psychologists study it. This is both the joy and challenge of our field.
The scientific method consists of six steps:
The following resource is required to complete the assessment.
The resources provided here are optional and support the assessment. They provide helpful information about the topics. You may use other resources of your choice to prepare for this assessment; however, you will need to ensure that they are appropriate, credible, and valid. The PSYC-FP1000 Library Guide can help direct your research. The Supplemental Resources and Research Resources, both linked from the left navigation menu in your courseroom, provide additional resources to help support you.
Critical evaluation of a source requires locating the thesis statement. Note: You may wish to review the Anatomy of a Scholarly Article Campus page, linked in the Resources, which demonstrates where to locate the critical information in a scholarly article. The thesis statement will be the sentence or two that describes what your paper or presentation intends to prove. This differs from a hypothesis, which is used in experiments. For example:
In our daily lives, we often conduct little experiments to detect cause-and-effect connections. If you are interested in gardening, for example, you might try adding plant food to one bed of flowers but not another, and then ask the question, “Does the use of plant food (the independent variable) affect the size of the flowers (the dependent variable)?” Your hypothesis might be: flowers that receive plant food will have larger and more blooms than flowers not receiving plant food. By comparing unfed plants (the control group) to those receiving plant food (the experimental group), you could then find out whether the plant food is worth using. To understand your results, you would also need to consider possible extraneous variables, such as differences in how much light both groups of flowers were exposed to, and how much water each group of flowers received.
The Source Analysis Worksheet is provided in Resources for this assessment to help you successfully complete your work, based on the following scenario.
Suppose you work for a nonprofit agency, providing services and support for people with intellectual disabilities. While fundraising, your supervisor ran into a number of false beliefs about the brain and psychology. She wants you to do some research into the common neuromyths—common misconceptions about brain functions, particularly associated with learning and education—and has asked you to report on one research article and one credible popular press article on neuromyths. She has asked you to evaluate the sources and information from the two articles, based on the following thesis:
In order to accurately report your evaluation of the sources, your supervisor has asked you to complete a Source Analysis Worksheet. In Section 1 of the form, you will record information on the scholarly article. In Section 2 of the form, you will record information based on the non-scholarly article.
| Place reference for this article below. | Format for article with doi:
Note: the doi is an identifier given to digital articles to make them easier to find. On an article, you find the doi in the header or toward the bottom. |
Format for article without doi: |
| Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. doi: XXX.XXXXXX.XXXX | Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. Retrieved from http://www.XXXXXXX.XXX |
| Introduction, Methods, Discussion, and Relevance | Direct quote with quotation marks and citation (author, year, page):
Example: “The sky is blue except when it is cloudy,” (Drake, 2017, p. 1). |
Paraphrase with citation (author, year):
Example: Unless it is overcast, people see the sky as blue (Drake, 2017). |
| Introduction | ||
| What were the researchers trying to find? What was their hypothesis?
Tip: Look for words like “goal,” “predict,” “purpose,” or “aims”—this can usually be found toward the end of the introduction. |
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| Methods | ||
| What type of design was it?
Tip: information for this may be in the last paragraph of the introduction or in the methods section. To decode it all: · Experimental method: look for “experiment” or “control group.” · Naturalistic observation: look for “observation” or “description.” · Correlational method: look for “correlation,” “relationship between,” or “difference.” · Survey method: look for the word “survey.” |
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| Who were the participants? | ||
| What type of measure was used?
Tip: Look for mention of tests, surveys, or questionnaires used. |
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| Example description: The researchers used [type of study] method to investigate [hypothesis] by administering [measure] to [participants]. | ||
| Discussion | ||
| What were the researchers’ findings?
Tip: Look for phrases like “our results show,” “our findings,” “our conclusion,” “support,” or “revealed.” |
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| Relevance to Topic or Thesis | ||
| Does this article support or refute your thesis? Discuss how it relates. | ||
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| Place reference for this article below. | Format for article from magazine or newspaper: | Format for other electronic articles: |
| Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of article. Title of Online Periodical, volume number(issue number if available). Retrieved from http://www.someaddress.com/full/url | Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of document. Retrieved from http://Web address |
(The more “Yes” answers, the more credible the source. If a source gets less than 5 “Yes” answers, hesitate to use it.)
| Question | Yes | No | Question | Yes | No |
| Is the author credible? Are they an authority on the topic? Look for an author bio, link on the author, or do a Web search for the author. If no author is listed, check no. | Does the author have credentials (education related to the topic, professional position related to the topic)? Look for an author bio, link on the author, or do a Web search for the author. If no author is listed, check no. | ||||
| Does the article content align with what you have read in the course texts? | Is the article written in unbiased, non-judgmental, non-opinionated, non-emotional language? | ||||
| Does the article have references listed or linked? | Are all facts backed by citations or links to sources? | ||||
| Is it published on a university or government website (.edu or .gov)? Is the article published in a newspaper or magazine (print or online)? | Is the information current (within the last five years)? If no date of publication or posting is mentioned, check no. |
| Direct quote with quotation marks and citation (author, year, page): | Paraphrase with citation (author, year): | |
| What is the main point or purpose of the article? | ||
| Important fact 1: | ||
| Important fact 2: | ||
| Important fact 3: | ||
| Important fact 4: | ||
| Important fact 5: | ||
| Conclusion of the article’s author: | ||
| Additional Notes | ||
| Does this article support or refute your thesis? Discuss how it relates.
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