1. Chapter 4 Summary

2. LOOK AT SEVERAL ARTICLES BEFORE YOU COMMIT TO ONE
You will find some articles easier to read than others
Some require background knowledge that you do not yet have.
Some are much longer than others.
You will find some articles more interesting than others
You will find some topics more interesting than others.
Some researchers write better than others.

3. READ The title Helps you choose the article you want to read
If the title does not interest you, you probably will not be interested in reading the entire article.
If the title interests you, read the Abstract.

4. What is an abstract?
One paragraph summary of an article that usually appears on the first page of a journal article.
If your article does not have an Abstract, it is probably not a scientific journal article.

5. what to expect in an article’s introduction
The Introduction is a “Why We Did It” section. It should tell you
What the hypothesis is
Why the hypothesis makes sense
Why the hypothesis should be tested
Why the author’s approach to testing the hypothesis makes sense
The Introduction will probably be the hardest part of the article for you to understand.

6. To understand the introduction, You may need to do some background reading
Authors often assume that you already know the studies and theories that they discuss. If you do not, you may have to look up those articles and theories (sometimes, you need to go backwards to go forwards).
Rather than reading the original sources, you may be able to get by with reading a textbook summary or a Wikipedia entry.
Once you have the necessary background for understanding one article, you probably have the background for understanding a whole family of related articles.

7. What’s a method section
It’s a “How we did” section that tells you what was done to whom.
The two main elements are
Who the participants were (in terms of how they were recruited and in terms of characteristics like age and gender), and
What the participants were told, shown, and asked to do.
The method section should be a detailed enough recipe for the study that you could, after reading it, repeat the study.

8. what’s in the results section?
This is the “What we found” section:
The main focus should be on telling the reader whether the results support the hypothesis.
Sometimes, the results section has three parts:
Explaining what individual scores mean (how participants’ behaviors were transformed into a score for that participant),
Stating what analysis was done and providing information justifying that analysis, and
Stating whether the results support the hypothesis
Even if the study uses statistics that you don’t understand, the author should make it easy for you to understand whether the results supported the hypothesis.

9. What’s the discussion section?
It integrates the Introduction with the Resultd section
Often, involves 3 sections
Whether the hypothesis was supported;
Strengths of the study, weaknesses of the study (alternative explanations for the findings), limitations of the study (the findings might not apply to certain situations or populations), suggestions for future research; and
Implications of the study for real life and for psychological science.

10. Questions to ask when critically evaluating the introduction
Authors’ claim: The hypothesis follows logically from theory or past research
Your questions:
Could a different hypothesis follow logically from theory or past research?
If the claim is that the hypothesis follows logically from a certain theory,
Does that hypothesis really follow from that theory?
Could another theory or model predict that same outcome?
Authors’ claim: We have found the best way to test the hypothesis
How would I test that hypothesis? Is my way better?
What problems are there with how they are testing the hypothesis?

11. Questions to Ask When critically evaluating the method section
Question the construct validity of the measures and manipulations
Are the measures reliable and well –accepted?
What is the evidence for the measure’s validity?
What is the evidence for the manipulation’s validity?
Question how easy it would have been for participants to have played along with the hypothesis.

12. Questions to ask when critically evaluating the results section
Question any null results
Failing to find significant result may mean failing to have enough power
Question significant results
Did they use a significance level greater than .05?
Did they do many analyses? (If so, at least one would be significant by chance alone.)

13. Questions to ask when critically evaluating the discussion section
Were there other explanations of the findings that the authors did not consider?
Were there results that the authors did not try to explain?
Were there weaknesses or limitations of the study (e.g., their sample did not include women) that the authors did not discuss?

14. What could justify doing a direct replication?
A science must produce replicable findings. We only know that we have replicable findings if studies are replicated.
Currently, there seems to be a replication crisis in psychology (and other sciences) because results are often not replicating. A study’s findings may not replicate because that study’s findings were the result of
Type 1 error
Type 2 error
Fraud

15. What could justify doing a SYSTEMATIC replication?
Null results could be due to lack of power, so a study could be replicated using a more powerful study (e.g., a study that had more participants, more reliable measures, more controlled conditions, or a more powerful design)
External validity concerns could be addressed by repeating the study with a different participant population or a different setting (real life rather than the lab).
Construct validity concerns due to participants being suspicious about the study could be addressed by moving a lab study into the field or by using a more convincing cover story.

16. What could justify doing a CONCEPTUAL replication?
No measure of a construct is perfect—and no manipulation of a construct is perfect. Therefore, repeating the study using different manipulations or measures would strengthen our confidence in the results.
A conceptual replication would especially be justified if there were concerns about the measures or manipulations used in original study.