Article Critique Paper

Each student is required to write an article critique paper based on one of the research articles present on Canvas only those articles listed on Canvas can be critiqued – if you critique a different article, it will not be graded. If you are unclear about any of this information, please ask.
An article critique is a written communication that conveys your understanding of a research article and how it relates to the conceptual issues of interest to this course.

Your paper will contain the following 6 elements:
1. Title page: 1 page (3 points)
Use APA style to present the appropriate information:
A Running head must be included and formatted APA style
The running head is a short title of your creation (no more than 50 characters) that is in ALL CAPS. This running head is left-justified (flush left on the page). Look at the first page of these instructions, and you will see how to set up your running head.

There must be a page number on the title page that is right justified. It is in the header on the title page and all subsequent pages.
Your paper title appears on the title page. This is usually 12 words or less, and the first letter of each word is capitalized. It should be descriptive of the paper (For this paper, you should use the title of the article you are critiquing. The paper title can be the same title as in the Running head or it can differ – your choice). The title should be bolded.
Your name will appear on the title page, include 2 double spaced lines between the title and your name (see the title page here). Your name and institutional affiliation (the name of your university) should not be bold.
Your institution will appear on the title page as well

For all papers, make sure to double-space EVERYTHING and use Times New Roman font. This includes everything from the title page through the references.
2. Summary of the Article: 1 ½ page minimum, 3 pages maximum (10 points)

An article critique should briefly summarize, in your own words, the article’s research question and how it was addressed.
Your article summary will be graded based on the following criteria:

Identify the type of study and provide a reasonable explanation for your choice. Is the study experimental or correlational? Explain how you know.

Identify the independent and dependent variables. Explain the levels of the IV, and how they manipulated the IV. Discuss, briefly, how the DV was operationally defined and measured.
Explain the study methods, including sample size, data collection methods, and general procedures in the study. Give a reasonable summary that could explain how the study was conducted.
Summarize the findings. What did they find in the study? What can we conclude from these findings?
3. Critique: 1 ½ pages minimum, 3 pages maximum (20 points; 5 points per critique).

This portion of the article critique assignment focuses on your own thoughts about the content of the article (i.e. your own ideas in your own words). For this section, please use the word “Critique” below the last sentence in your summary, and have the word “Critique” flush left.
Address at least four of the following elements. Each critique should be at least one paragraph long.

1). In your opinion, are there any confounding variables in the study (these could be extraneous variables or nuisance variables)? If so, explain what the confound is and specifically how it is impacting the results of the study. A sufficient explanation of this will include at least one paragraph of writing.

2). Is the sample used in the study an appropriate sample? Is the sample representative of the population? Could the study be replicated if it were done again? Why or why not?

3). Did they measure the dependent variable in a way that is valid? Be sure to explain what validity is, and why you believe the dependent variable was or was not measured in a way that was valid.

5). Did the authors of the study employ appropriate ethical safeguards? Explain. In what way did they do so?

6). Briefly describe a follow-up study you might design that builds on the findings of the study you read how the research presented in the article relates to research, articles or material covered in other sections of the course.

7). Describe how/why the method used in the article is either better or worse for addressing a particular issue than other methods.

4. WRITING PROCESS REFLECTION: ½ PAGE MINIMUM, 1 PAGE MAXIMUM (5 POINTS)
You must include a brief, two paragraph reflection at the end of your assignment detailing your writing process throughout this paper. Include the following details in your reflection. This should be written in paragraph form (not bullet points) and should address your writing process. You can feel free to use the first person and speak about your personal experiences for this part of your paper.
Your reflection should include the following information:
First Draft Development
Revision Process
Tools
Feedback Integration
Alternative Methods
Describe how you wrote your first draft for both the summary and critique sections of the paper.

Explain how you developed your initial ideas, structured your writing, and approached each section.

Discuss how you reviewed and revised your drafts.
What specific steps did you take to ensure your paper met high standards of quality (e.g., improving clarity, structure, grammar, etc.).
Identify any tools you used to assist with your editing process (e.g., AI tools, spellcheckers, grammar tools, or writing resources).
If you used AI, describe how you used it and its role in refining your work.
Include the specific prompts or questions you provided to the AI (you do not need to share the entire conversation, only the exact prompts or questions you used).

Explain any feedback you received (e.g., from peers, instructors, or writing centers).

Describe how you incorporated this feedback into your revisions.
If you didn’t use tools or seek feedback, explain why and describe what methods you used instead to edit and refine your work.
Grammar and Writing Quality (8 points)
Few psychology courses are as writing intensive as Research Methods (especially Research Methods Two next semester!). As such, I want to make sure that you develop writing skills early. This is something that needs special attention, so make sure to proofread your papers carefully.
Avoid run-on sentences, sentence fragments, spelling errors, and grammar errors.

Writing quality will become more important in future papers, but this is where you should start to hone your writing skills.
We will give you feedback on your papers, but I recommend seeking some help from the FIU writing center to make sure your paper is clear, precise, and covers all needed material.

If your paper lacks originality and contains too much overlap with the paper you are summarizing (i.e. you do not paraphrase appropriately or cite your sources properly), you will lose some or all of the points from writing quality, depending on the extent of the overlap with the paper. For example, if sentences contain only one or two words changed from a sentence in the original paper, you will lose points from writing quality.
References, Citations, and APA style (4 points)
Provide the reference for this article in proper APA format
Citations are in proper APA style, including guidelines for direct quotes and paraphrasing.
Other Important Guidelines:
Permitted Uses of AI:
Clarification and Understanding:
You are allowed to use AI tools to:
Define research terms or clarify concepts. For example, you may ask AI to explain “independent variable,” “dependent variable,” or the difference between “correlational” and “experimental” studies.
Ask AI for general guidance on how to interpret study methods or findings (without providing specific details from the article).
Writing Assistance:
You may use AI for improving language, grammar, and readability. For example, after writing your summary, you can ask AI to help rephrase awkward sentences or check for grammatical errors.
You may ask AI to suggest alternative ways to structure certain sections of your critique (e.g., improving the flow of your summary), but you must write the content based on your own understanding.
Prohibited Uses of AI:
No Content Generation: You cannot use AI to write any part of the paper. The paper must reflect your own understanding and analysis of the article.
No Rephrasing of Entire Sections: While AI can help with sentence structure, you cannot input sections of your summary and ask AI to rephrase entire paragraphs. The content must be based on your own ideas and wording.
No Summarizing the Article for You: You cannot input the article’s content into AI and ask it to summarize or analyze it. The critique must be an original product of your own thinking.

Important Formatting Guidelines and Tips:
Pay attention to the page length requirements – 1 page for the title page, 1.5 pages to 3 pages for the summary, 1.5 pages to 3 pages for the critique, one or two paragraphs for the brief summary, and 1 page for the references page. If you are under the minimum, we will deduct points. If you go over the maximum, we are a little more flexible (you can go over by half page or so), but we want you to try to keep it to the maximum page.
Page size is 8 1/2 X 11” with all 4 margins set one inch on all sides. You must use 12-point Times New Roman font.
As a general rule, ALL paragraphs and sentences are double spaced in APA papers. It even includes the references, so make sure to double space EVERYTHING

When summarizing the article in your own words, you need not continually cite the article throughout the rest of your critique. Nonetheless, you should follow proper referencing procedures, which means that:

If you are inserting a direct quote from any source, it must be enclosed in quotations and followed by a parenthetical reference to the source. “Let’s say  am directly quoting this current sentence and the next.

would then cite it with the author name, date of publication, and the page number for the direct quote” (Winter, 2013, p . 4).
Note: We will deduct points if you quote more than once per page, so keep quotes to a minimum. Paraphrase instead, but make sure you still give the original author credit for the material by citing him or using the author’s name (“In this article, Smith noted that …” or “In this article, the authors noted that…”)
If you choose to reference any source other than your chosen article, it must be listed in a reference list.
Proofread everything you write.  actually recommend reading some sentences aloud to see if they flow well, or getting family or friends to read your work. Writing quality will become more important in future papers, so you should start working on that now!
Purpose of The Article Critique Paper

1). Psychological Purpose
This paper serves several purposes, the first of which is helping you gain insight into research papers in psychology. As this may be your first time reading and writing papers in psychology, one goal of Paper I is to give you insight into what goes into such papers. This article critique paper will help you learn about the various sections of an empirical research report by reading at least one peer-reviewed articles (articles that have a Title Page, Abstract*, Literature Review, Methods Section, Results Section, and References Page—

have already selected some articles for you to critique, so make sure you only critique one in the folder provided on Canvas) This paper will also give you some insights into how the results sections are written in APA formatted research articles. Pay close attention to those sections, as throughout this course you’ll be writing up some results of your own!
In this relatively short paper, you will read one of five articles posted on

Canvas and summarize what the authors did and what they found. The first part of the paper should focus on summarizing the design the authors used for their project. That is, you will identify the independent and dependent variables, talk about how the authors carried out their study, and then summarize the results (you don’t need to fully understand the statistics in the results, but try to get a sense of what the authors did in their analyses). In the second part of the paper, you will critique the article for its methodological strengths and weaknesses. Finally, in part three, you will provide your references for the Article Critique Paper in APA format.

2). APA Formatting Purpose
The second purpose of the Article Critique paper is to teach you proper American Psychological Association (APA) formatting. In the instructions below, I tell you how to format your paper using APA style. There are a lot of very specific requirements in APA papers, so pay attention to the instructions below as well as the APA style powerpoint on Canvas. We are using the 7th edition of the APA style manual.
3). Writing Purpose
Finally, this paper is intended to help you grow as a writer. Few psychology classes give you the chance to write papers and receive feedback on your work. This class will! We will give you feedback on this paper in terms of content, spelling, and grammar.
AI is a tool. Rather than using AI to complete the assignment for you, you can use it as a supportive tool to clarify research concepts, check your understanding, and improve your language and structure. By using AI in this way, you can develop your ability to analyze and summarize research articles independently, while also learning to use AI effectively and ethically in academic work. This approach fosters responsible AI usage, enabling you to strengthen your writing skills and confidence in your own analytical abilities. This paragraph was written in collaboration with generative AI, ChatGPT4o.

If you have any questions about the articles, your ideas, or your writing, please ask. Although we won’t be able to review entire drafts of papers before they are handed in, we are very willing to discuss problems, concerns or issues that you might have.

Last Completed Projects