Article Critique Assignment

Instructions 

The purpose of the article critique assignment is to strengthen your skills at critically assessing
the literature. An assigned article will be given, and students will provide a 1-2 page single-spaced critique of the article. Two article critique assignments will be given during the semester.
Questions are listed below each section to guide your critiques (you do not have to answer every
single question). They are mainly to help. The article critique assignment is 4 parts:
I. Article Summary
Provide a brief, one to two paragraph summary of the article.
Questions to consider:
1. What is the purpose of the research?
2. What are the research questions/hypotheses?
3. What study design was used?
4. What sampling methodology was used?
5. What are the main, overall results?
6. What limitations are stated?
7. What are the main overall conclusions or recommendations the researchers state?
II. Article Strengths
Write one to two paragraphs on the article’s strengths.
Questions to consider:
1. What are the strengths of the article’s introduction and research questions? Do they fill an
important research gap? Are they relevant to the field?
2. What are the strengths of the article’s study design, methodology, or sampling strategy?
Are novel techniques used? Is a strong study design employed?
3. What are the strengths of the article’s results and discussion section? Are the results
presented in a clear manner? Are graphs or charts utilized? Do the researchers make
strong recommendations? Are implications for the field strong?
III. Article Weaknesses
Write one to two paragraphs on the article’s weaknesses. You can organize this in the
same order the article is written (i.e., discuss weaknesses in the introduction, then the
methods, etc.), or you may organize it by discussing the most important weaknesses
first and the least important weaknesses last.
Questions to consider:

1. What are the weaknesses in the introduction? Are the research questions not explicitly
stated?

2. Could a better study design have been utilized? Are the authors lacking their description
of the study design, sampling methodology, and data analysis? Could other statistical
techniques be employed?
3. Are results unclear? Are tables unorganized? Do the researchers not highlight important
results?
4. What major limitations are discussed that you consider weaknesses of the article? What
limitations in the discussion section are missing or not discussed?
5. Are recommendations or conclusions lacking? Are there other implications that aren’t
discussed? Did researchers “over reach” regarding their results and conclusions?
IV. Article Critique Discussion
The purpose of the article critique discussion is to promote conversation around the
articles and to share ideas about strengths, weaknesses, and other general
observations about the article.

Some examples of questions the instructor may post include:

•  “The study design for this article is a cross-sectional study. What other study designs
  would have been more appropriate to answer the research question?”
• “The study participants were limited to patients without cardiovascular complications.
  Why do you think the authors made this restriction?”
•  “Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD) was measured in this study using
  self-report. What other ways would have been useful to measure COPD in this
  population?”