About
Journal articles are peer-reviewed publications that help scholars communicate ideas, theories, empirical analyses, and conclusions.
The ability to critically read journal articles is a skill that is developed with practice. This skill is especially useful when you transfer to a 4-year college or university.
If you are contemplating attending graduate school to earn a Masters, professional, or Doctoral degree, then analyzing journal articles is an essential skill.
Analyzing a journal article is related to reading. Reading is a skill that is developed with practice and is important for your future academic, professional, and personal endeavors.
- Academically, your reading load will increase with each semester you are in higher education. Building that skill now will serve you well into the future.
- Professionally, you will have contracts, employee handbooks, technical manuals, financial reports, and other documents to read.
- Personally, your son, daughter, nephew, or niece will need you to teach them to read.
Estimated Time
An estimated 270 minutes is needed to complete this activity.
Instructions
Step 1: Download PDF of the article
- POSC 121 – Doherty, David, Conor M. Dowling, and Michael G. Miller. 2019. “Do Local Party Chairs Think Women and Minority Candidates Can Win? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment.” The Journal of Politics 81 (4): 1282–97. https://doi.org/10.1086/704698.
download
Step 2: Analyze the Article
- Identify the 12 parts of the article, as described in the Anatomy of a Journal Article and elaborated upon in the Analyzing Journal Articles“>Details of Analyzing Journal Articles, and you can also review the Walkthrough.
- Optional:Schedule a tutoring appointment with the Writing Center or meet with a NetTutor (if available) if you want a 3rd party to help you think through this assignment
- Optional: Upload a picture of you Writing Center Tutoring slip or a screenshot of your NetTutor interaction as evidence
Step 3: Demonstrate identification of parts
- Paper: hand write on the margins or the back of the page
- Electronic: electronically highlight the text and/or comment in margins of the page
Step 4: Write Out the Research Design
- Of the 12 parts, only one of them needs to be written out: Research Design. The Research Design is how the author compares the effect of the explanatory variable (X) on the outcome variable (O) in a group (G) or set of groups.
- If needed, return to the Details of Analyzing Journal Articles page and the Walkthrough Presentation for clarification on the concept.
- Visit “Journal Article Analysis” webpage on my personal website (Links to an external site.)
- For an in-depth discussion on research design, you can read Chapter 6 – Elements of Research Design in Introduction to Political Science Research Methods (Links to an external site.).
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