Scientific Reasoning Assignment Part 3
Follow the directions in the Lesson. Refer back to the Components of an Empirical Article and General Reference in APA Style, from Assignment #2, if needed.
What is the problem/question that is under study in this article?
Where did you find this information?
What is the hypothesis of the study?
Where did you find this information?
What is the independent variable in this study? (Be sure to refer to the hypothesis for help on this)
What is the dependent variable in this study? (Be sure to refer to the hypothesis for help on this)
Who were the participants?
Were they randomly selected?
Were they randomly assigned?
As succinctly as possible, tell me what they actually did in the experiment. Were there more than two groups? How did they manipulate the independent variable? How did they measure the dependent variable?
In the last short report, you had a figure that allowed you to “read” the results pictorially. In this article, there is no figure or table, but in terms of the results – you need to determine was the hypothesis supported or not?
NOTE: You don’t need to state (or even understand) all of the statistics, but you do need to state if the hypothesis was supported or not and how you know that.
How could the findings of this research be applied in real life?
What is one question that the authors of Out for a Smoke suggest for future study?
Write the APA formatted reference for this article, Out for a Smoke.
ARTICLE
Scientific Reasoning: Assignment 2
Research is communicated through empirical articles in peer-reviewed journals. For
this assignment you need to read the article Saving the Last for Best and respond to a
series of questions about that article.
Assignment Objectives
1. Identify the parts of a journal article and be able to locate information in the
appropriate section of the article.
2. Correct identify the information that is important when reading a research article.
Activities
1. Read the document Components of Empirical Article – supports course learning
objective 3 and assignment objective 1
2. Refer to the General Reference in APA Style if needed
3. Read the article, Saving the Last for Best: A Positivity Bias for End Experiences,
taking notes on the important information – supports course learning objective 4
and assignment objective 2
4. Review the assignment rubric before responding
Assessment
1. Respond to the questions based on your reading of the article, Saving the Last for
Best.
NOTE: Because this is a short research report, there is no abstract in this article
file:///C:/Users/LAPTOP/Downloads/Out%20for%20a%20Smoke%20(3).pdf- THIS IS THE ATICLE LINK
Whenever you read an empirical article, it is likely that it will be written in a particular style – APA Style if it is a psychology article. The research article is not the only type of article found in peer-reviewed journals. You will also find meta-analysis (a compilation of a number of research studies on one topic – combined for new statistical analysis), literature reviews (again a review of previous studies, but with the new statistical analysis), and other types of short reports.
In this course, I want you to read some empirical articles – research reports – and they each follow the standard format. The following are the components of empirical journal articles:
Title and Author
Obviously, any article will start with the title. You should find that the title gives you some idea of the purpose of the study and/or the variables under investigation. You will also find the author’s names (in APA Style, the order of the authors represents the contribution to the article and therefore the names in any citation or reference are presented in that order, not alphabetical), their affiliations, and sometimes an author’s note. The author’s note may simply be an acknowledgement of the method for corresponding with the primary author or it may include information about the funding source for this research.
Abstract
The abstract will give you a brief summary of this article and usually includes the problem under investigation (corresponds with the introduction), the participants and study methods (found in the methods section), the findings (statistical results will be found in the results section) and finally implications of the research (which will be included in the discussion section).
When you are searching for an article on a particular topic, or for a review of previous research on a particular subject, you may use the abstract to check decide whether this is the type of research you are looking for, or whether you should move on to another article.
In your first article, Saving the Last for Best: A Positivity Bias for End Experiences, there is no abstract. This is a short report and therefore it does not include an abstract.
Introduction
Actually, the introduction is untitled – it is the first section of the article. There are several important features of an introduction (and I have asked you to listen to a Quick Guide on introductions), and those features include
- Identification of the problem in the study and why it is important to study this problem.
- Description of previous research that relates to this study. This is commonly referred to as the literature review. These are research studies that helped to inform the research conducted in this article.
- Hypothesis – The hypothesis(es) is usually listed toward the end of the introduction
Method
This section of the article gives you specific information about how the study was conducted. It usually contains subsections such as Participants, Materials, and Procedure. While I have included a Quick Guide on the Methods section some of that information is a bit more detailed than you need for these assignments.
- Participants
It is important for you to know who were the participants. You will want to note who the participants are because it will inform who and where you can generalize the results of this study to others. - Materials
This subsection will provide you with information about the variables and how they were manipulated or measured. - Procedure
Finally this subsection will explain exactly what the researchers did – allowing other researchers to replicate this research.
Results
In this section of the article, the statistical analysis will be explained. It may provide tables and figures. You may not be able to understand all the statistical used in the article, you might find helpful information from the charts and/or figures.
Discussion
The first paragraph of the discussion section usually summarizes the research question, methods and the interpretation of the results. In other words, here you should learn if the research support or does not support the original hypothesis(es).
Next the authors will discuss the importance of the study (this may refer to some of the theory included in the literature review in the introduction). Finally, the authors may include some limitations of the study, other notes on the study, and suggestions for future research.
References
Here you will find a listing of every source that was cited in the article itself. It is critical that you follow strict APA Style formatting for your references. Refer to the Citation Guide included in this module for assistance in writing the citation reference for this article.