Critical Evaluation of a Scientific Research Paper

As you critically evaluate a research paper for this course, you should be conscious of a number of items:

A complete citation contains the following and should be provided in APA format for each critical evaluation

:

1. What are the central questions the research is addressing? What are the hypotheses being tested? These are often somewhat different things. Questions are often broader in scope than the project is designed to handle. Hypotheses may be adequately tested, but the outcome may only provide insights into the questions' answers.

2. What assumptions are being made? Always remember the adage "good science, false premise"; the science is only as good as the  assumptions upon which it is founded.

3. What testing methods are employed? Are these methods well documented? Are they clearly described so they could be replicated? Are the methods applied correctly? What assumptions are being made in the experimental design?

4. What are the results and how are they communicated? Can you understand each table and figure?

5. Have any hypotheses been falsified and how? Which hypotheses are corroborated by consilient (interdisciplinary) arguments and how?

6. What are the paper's conclusions, and, more importantly, are the conclusions justified? Often wrong conclusions are drawn or results are over-interpreted.

7. How might the study be improved?

8. What are the implications of the research beyond the scope of the study? How does this work relate to other studies you are familiar with? You should always be interrelating papers you read. Does it have any application to your research interests?

After a while, this style of analysis will become second nature -- every time you read a scientific paper you will consider these questions / criteria. Review papers, those that do not directly present a scientific design and research results, cannot be treated this way.

This analysis was developed in part from suggestions in D. Janick-Buckner, "Getting undergraduates to critically read and discuss primary literature. Cultivating students' analytical abilities in an advanced cell biology course". Journal of College Science Teaching. September/October 1997

© Meers, Savarese, Demers, Barreto, Kakareka, Volety, Everham, Cruz-Alvarez, Loh, Goebel, Fugate, Bovard, Hartley, Mujtaba, & Gunnels 2009.

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Last updated February 16, 2011