Scholarly Research Article Review Instructions
For this assignment you will review a single, scholarly PRIMARY Research article in the APUS Library and summarize what it says about a specific infant and toddler disorder of your choice (Infantile Autism, Tay-Sachs Disease, Sickle Cell Anemia and Cerebral Palsy are some examples). This 2-3 page paper must be a review of scholarly research, not commercial Psychology Today, Wikipedia or WebMD style publications or self-help or parent support organization material (the latter is very valuable to families in need of easy to digest and access information, but isn’t applicable to this assignment). Article must be recent within the past 5-7 years.
For this assignment you will review a single scholarly article in the APUS Online Library and summarize what it says about the specific topic that has been identified in the Assignment section of the classroom. This 2-3 page paper must be a review of scholarly research, not commercial Psychology Today, Wikipedia or WebMD style publications or self-help or parent support organization material (the latter is very valuable to families in need of easy to digest and access information, but isn’t applicable to this assignment).
The introductory paragraph will give a brief description of the topic and the article that you will be reviewing.
The article summary will include the following: (NOTE: If you can’t find the elements listed in this section, then you have not chosen a research article.)
• Discussion of the focus of the research
• Description of the hypothesis of the study
• Description of how the study was conducted including the population that was studied, the methodology used (i.e. naturalistic observation, experiment, case study, survey, etc). How the data was collected and analyzed
• Description of the results of the study
Your review/discussion of the article will include
- A discussion of the way the research was conducted and potential impact on results (e.g. problems with the study
methodology that might have affected its validity and/or generalizability).
- A description of three ideas inspired in you by the article.
- A description of the use, impact, or potential the research might have.
You don’t have to be a professional expert to write this section. Think about it this way–if you were someone working with children facing the challenges of the disorder you selected to read about and report on, what would you want future researchers to keep investigating that you believe could prove valuable to sufferers and their families? For example, a medical professional or psychologist might be interested in having researchers continue to study how broad a particular diagnostic classification spectrum needs to be to avoid catching too many and too few kids in the diagnostic net (it goes without saying that we would love to be able to diagnose accurately 100% of the time and cure everyone, but we will leave that off the table since it should be everyone’s goal and anyone reading about a disorder could have that cross his/her mind).
For this type of academic paper scholarly publications from the APUS online library must be used. Why is the APUS online library required? Scholarly sources are found in academic journals (The Journal of… is a good tip for identifying these) and the APUS online library has a very large set of holdings and a staff of librarians to assist. You can connect with both by clicking the Library link while logged into your classroom. Other university libraries also carry such journals but online access is frequently restricted to those universities’ enrolled students. Hard copies from traditional “brick-and-mortar” libraries cannot be used unless you can also provide an online copy to verify the article’s existence in digital format. This is because your instructor needs to be able to verify that you are using actual published journal articles, the journals they are published in, their dates of publication and their authors. Although some of the following may be accessed through links in the APUS online library, popular magazines, Wikipedia, About.com, Ask.com, newspapers, blogs or other opinion-based publications may not be used. Not all articles found in the databases are scholarly. If you are unsure about the appropriateness of a resource, check with your instructor before using it for your assignment. The source for your article must be cited in the paper body and listed in APA style in a page entitled “References” attached separately to the end of your paper. (HINT: since this is a review of a single scholarly article, your reference page will only contain only SINGLE source. Do not incorporate any information outside of this SINGLE source.) The Online Library contains and excellent discussion on identifying scholarly articles in the Tutorial and Student Studies Center.
APA style can be a bit like learning a second language. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/apa/index.html is an excellent practical, how-to guide to this formatting style. Your classroom Resources folder also contains APA formatting guides.
You don’t need to have an abstract, as is typically required for APA style, for this paper but you must include an APA formatted cover page in addition to the References page mentioned above. The 2-3page requirement does not include the cover or reference pages and the paper must be formatted in Times New Roman or Arial font no larger than size 12 with 1” margins on all sides of the paper body and double spaced. Length compliance is determined using these formatting rules in grading the work. Formatting will be checked on your instructor’s end and a paper that falls short of the required length submitted in large font or with wide margins will receive a point deduction of 10% for each missing page. Be careful to check your work for proper formatting and other instructions compliance before submitting. Revisions cannot be allowed after students are notified via grading feedback of these problems.
Your paper must be written at a college level. This means a minimum amount (nobody often achieves perfection) of spelling and grammar errors that don’t get in the way of following your points; no use of personal first or second person pronouns (“I” or “you”) in your article summary; no personal story sharing or creative writing style wording (papers that begin with a question or “Imagine for a moment that…” or “Webster’s Dictionary defines _____ as…” style openers are fine for some courses but not for this assignment. Simply start with, “This paper focuses on ________” with the topic of your paper in the blank space, and then move on to summarizing the findings of the publication you cite in the paper and the other required elements).
The 2nd part of your paper will include your review/discussion of the article as outlined previously. This section of your paper may include first person writing. Please be sure that your article summary is clear and distinct from your review of the article. Do not intermingle the two sections of your paper.
