answer phase III based On scholarly article attached.
ARTICLE NOTE-TAKING TEMPLATE
Academic writing is often challenging to read because it is written by experts for experts. Part of the skill of summarizing a scholarly article is being able to figure out which are the most important pieces of information. Another crucial skill is being able to paraphrase effectively. Taking notes as you read is an important first step. Don’t read an article like a book (from start to finish). Start with the title and the abstract to figure out what the study is about. The abstract will tell you the research question – how the study was carried out, and usually the results and the conclusions. The Discussion is the next place to skim and see what the authors concluded in a bit more detail. Once you’ve done that you’re ready to start taking more notes that you will use to write your summary. REMEMBER NOT TO COPY PHRASES – use your own words as you take notes.
QUESTIONS:
In very general terms, what is the study about? Read through the abstract and title several times. Underline the key terms that allow you to figure this out, write general idea next to them. Now without looking at the article, write your answer here.
What is the specific question that the study is trying to answer, i.e., the goal of the study? Read through the abstract carefully and skim though the introduction (the part of the paper before the methods but in APA format is not usually marked as Introduction). Focus on the words that say what the study aimed to investigate, underline these words, write research question next to them. Without looking at the article, write the research question here.
In very general terms, how did the researchers carry out the study? Read the abstract and introduction focus on the words that say what they did. You can add more details later – but you want to be able to describe the general idea of what the participants had to do.
What are the major hypotheses (predictions) of the study? Read the introduction carefully and look for words like hypothesize, predict, and expect. These are often at the end of the Introduction. Underline and mark the article as hypotheses. Write them here (but use your own words)
Who are the participants in the study? Read the Participants section carefully in the Method and answer the following questions. Make sure you underline the relevant information in the article.
How many participated?
Who were the participants?
Were the participants subdivided into groups? If so, what characterizes the groups? (e.g., 2 groups: smokers, non-smokers, 1 group, etc.). If relevant, underline the group information in the article and mark as group 1, group 2 etc..
How many in each group?
How many were male?
How many were female?
Age range? Mean age?
Race/ethnicity?
Is there anything else about the participants we should know to better understand the study? e.g., Were they healthy? Try to summarize this as much as possible.
Add more details about what the participants had to do. (Note studies with human subjects typically involve consenting - but this is common to all research studies and so does not need to be reported in your notes or summary). Read the Methods section several times, but bear in mind these can be hard to understand as professional researchers often use jargon. Look up terms you don’t understand. Underline the measures that are important for testing the researchers’ predictions.
What are the main important independent variables (IVs) and dependent variables (DVs) that are used to test the hypotheses? Write these down on the next page.
IVs (experimental manipulation - “cause” of behavior) e.g., effect of drug, stimulus condition, an intervention designed to reduce depression
List these here
DVs – How did the researchers measure the participants’ thoughts/feelings/behavior? If this includes answers to questionnaires, make sure to write down the name of questionnaire and what it measures. Are there other DVs? These might include reaction time, guilty verdicts, depressive symptoms, activity in particular areas of the brain? Look under Materials in the Methods section and list these here
What were the main results? Look first at the Discussion section. Report on the results that help to test the main hypotheses. Let the abstract guide you as to which are most important. Then take a look at the Results section (especially at any graphs or tables) but be aware that the stats in this section will probably not be easy for you to understand yet. So most of your information will come from the Discussion.
What did the authors conclude? Look carefully in the Discussion Section, were their hypotheses supported?
Make sure to say which were supported and which were not. Mark this in the article too. What other major conclusions did the authors make? Why is the study important?
Provide the citation for the article in APA format
