Introduction
- What was the authors’ rationale for the study? To aid you in your answer, indicate the broad scale topic that they felt their questions related to.
- What question or questions are the authors seeking to address?
- What predictions or hypotheses did the authors make with respect to their questions? If they didn’t make any predictions or hypotheses, formulate (and state below) one or more of your own hypotheses before reading the rest of the paper.
Methods – How does the design of the study address the question(s) posed?
- What methodological approaches were used to obtain data for this study? How many experiments were conducted?
- What was the data being collected? If appropriate to this type of study, what were the controls for each experiment?
- What statistical tests did the authors use to assess their data?
Results
- What were the key results of this study? (Pay particular attention to tables and figures and where they are referenced in the text.)
- Do their results support their hypotheses or predictions (or yours if they did not clearly identify any)?
Discussion
- Did the authors conclude that their hypotheses or predictions were supported by their findings? Does this agree with your assessment of their results (#8)? Be thoughtful about their interpretation of the results. Do they justify their interpretation well? Does it make sense in light of the literature they cited? Why or why not?
- How do the authors relate their findings to their rationale or broader scale applications?
- How do they (or would you) suggest following up on their study? In other words, what experiments or studies could be done to build on their work and/or to address unanswered questions?