Text for “How to Read a Journal Article in the Social Sciences”:
Reading an academic journal article can seem a little bit overwhelming, but this video will give you some tips to help you understand what you are reading. To get the most out of this tutorial, pull up a journal article from your field and open up the worksheet posted alongside this video. Hit pause as I ask questions and fill out your worksheet.
Before we start, let’s talk about journal article basics. Journal articles are how scholars speak to other researchers in their field. Everything that is published in a peer-reviewed journalhas been given the stamp of approval from experts in that area. The author makes an argument about the topic and provides evidence that supports that argument, just like you have to do when you write a thesis statement for a paper and have to provide support. So even though the language can be pretty technical in a journal article, just remember that it’s all about arguments and evidence.
Okay, the first thing you need to do before you read a journal article is to ask yourself: “What kind of information do I need? Why am I reading this article?” Students read articles for a lot of different reasons (you were assigned an article for a class, you are writing a paper, etc.). You should read the article differently based on how you are going to use it. Identifying your information need first will help you be more strategic about reading the article. We’ll come back to this later.
Alright, let’s dive into an article. Journal articles have a fairly standard format. Once you understand all of the parts,you can come up with a good strategy for reading them and getting the information you need. Let’s look at these parts one by one. If you’re filling out a worksheet as we go, you can pause the video after each segment to fill out your sheet.
Abstract: First, let’s look at the abstract. This paragraph summarizes the article, and should give you a general sense of what it is about. After reading this section, you should be able to answer “What topic is this article about? What is the author’s major finding?”
Introduction:The next part we’ll look at is the introduction. Sometimes there is also a separate section titled literature review. This part of the article summarizes what other research has been done in this area and shows how this particular research project fits into the big picture. Think about it as being the story of the research that’s been done in this particular field. Often there will be subheadings in this section that highlight the key theories and concepts that are developed as part of the research.After reading this section, you should be able to answer the question “what research has already been done in this area? What does the research in this article add to the big picture?”
Methods: Okay, now let’s talk about the methods section. The point of this section is to tell you what the researchers actually did for their research. After reading it, you should be able to imagine the researchers completing their work. Some journals have supplementary materials on their websites that give even more information about the research than you can find in the text. Depending on your field, this part might be pretty technical and hard to understand. Even if you don’t quite understand everything that’s being said, you should try to answer the question: “What kind of evidence is the author going to use in this article? How was this evidence collected, and why did the author choose this method?”
Results: Next, let’s look at the “results” section. Here, the authors will tell you what they found. Again, this section can be pretty technical in some fields. You might skim any figures and charts and read the narrative parts to help get a sense for what exactly the researchers found. If the researchers posed hypotheses, it is helpful to look for whether they found full, partial, or no support for each one as a starting point to interpreting the results. Your question for this is: “What did the authors find? Does the evidence that they present match the claims that they make?”
Discussion/Conclusion: The next section is usually titled “discussion”; sometimes it’s combined with the conclusion. Either way, this is a really important section because this is where the author summarizes the findings and discusses why this research is important. In addition, most articles will outline any limitations to the research and offer direction for future research. After reading this, you should be able to answer “What are the authors’ main arguments? Are these conclusions supported by the evidence? Why are they important?”
Okay, now that you know about the different parts of a journal article, let me give you a couple of strategies to help you read them more effectively.
Go back to the question of “what information do I need?”
Let’s say you’re reading the article for a class where the teacher is primarily asking you about the argument of the article. Based on what you know about the different parts of the article, you’ll know that you need to pay particular attention to the abstract, intro, and the discussion/conclusion. It’s always a good idea to re-read the abstract afterwards to see if you understand what it is saying and can summarize the argument in your own words.
Let’s say you are reading a journal article for a research methods class or for a lab that you work in. In this case, you’ll want to pay particular attention to the methods section when you read, highlighting words you don’t understand and writing questions in the margins to follow up on later. You need to know how to do this research later, so you really need to understand this part.
If you’re writing a paper or research proposal, you’ll want to utilize the literature review section, conclusion, and reference list to find other relevant sources and understand how they all fit together.
Okay, let’s take a few minutes to review.
- Which section of a journal article will describe what research has already been done in the area and show how the particular study will contribute to the larger field?
- Introduction/literature review
- Methods
- Results
- Abstract
The answer would be “a: introduction/literature review.” Remember, the intro gives the context for the study, the methods section tells you what the researchers did, the results section tells you what they found, and the discussion/conclusion section interprets the results.
- If you only had 3 minutes to read an article and needed to find the overall argument really quickly, where would you look?
- Results
- Abstract
- Introduction/literature review
- Methods
Your first stop should be the abstract, which will summarize the main findings of the article. If you had time to read in more detail, you might follow up by reading the conclusion to get a fuller explanation.
As you can see, knowing a little bit about how journal articles are set up can make them a lot easier to understand. Thanks for viewing this video, and log on to the Center for Undergraduate Research’s website at ugresearch.ku.edu to learn more about research opportunities at KU.