Article reflections

Analyze and critique the week’s reading assignments. Being able to critically review research is an important aspect of scientific enterprise. In addition, article reflections ideally facilitate appreciation for how empirical research is conducted and encourage careful consideration of how theory informs methods of data collection and analysis.

Include at most a few sentences summarizing the readings, followed by your critique or analysis of the readings.

Discuss what your found interesting or uninteresting, flaws in the reasoning of the papers, your assessment of the conclusions drawn and whether the data support the theory, issues that the author did not consider, synthesis of opposing viewpoints presented across several papers, an idea for future research, etc. The ideas expressed in your article reflection should be clear and concise, but do not write a simple summary of the readings.

Because some students may specialize in different disciplines, they may want to “spin” the week’s themes in a reasonable fashion toward their interests, which is fine.

The goal is to make sure that students not only complete the readings, but also put some degree of thought into the implications of, and interconnections among the readings and after our discussion of the topic that week. The article reflection should span across all the readings of the week. A reflection of only one of the articles will not receive a passing grade.