Research Critical Analysis of a Journal Article

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Please no plagiarism and make sure you are able to access all resource on your own before you bid. Main references come from Balkin, R. S., & Kleist, D. M. (2017) and/or American Psychological Association (2014). Assignments should adhere to graduate-level writing and be free from writing errors. I have also attached my assignment rubric so you can see how to make full points. Please follow the instructions to get full credit and use the attached worksheet as required. I need this completed by 09/21/19 at 7pm.

Assignment – Week 4

Research Critical Analysis of a Journal Article

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The purpose of this assignment is to allow you to practice the critical analysis of the contents of research articles. When you identify a research article, you want to begin by assessing whether the source of the article is scholarly and current. Once you have verified these elements, it is important to determine what the researchers were attempting to investigate, how the study was carried out, and what the outcomes were.

For this Assignment, you will critically examine the elements of a scholarly article. Because you will need to choose research articles that represent each type of methodology when you create your Final Project Annotated Bibliography, it is essential for you to understand the contents of a research article.

To Prepare

  • Review the media programs and blog found in the Learning Resources which will introduce you to the critical elements of a scholarly article, how to identify them, and how to read scholarly articles.
  • Review the Kenny, M. C., & Winick,      C. B. (2000) article found in the Learning Resources. You will use this article to complete this Assignment.
  • Review the Scholarly Article Content Analysis Preparation Guide, the Scholarly Article Content      Analysis Worksheet including the briefcase conceptualization found in the      Learning Resources and consider the “client” for any counseling implications. Note: You will use this Worksheet to complete this Assignment.

Assignment

  • Complete the Scholarly Article      Content Analysis Worksheet for the Kenny and Winick (2000) article.
  • Analyze the contents of the article and apply the findings to the case conceptualization included in the worksheet.
  • Critically analyze the article  and identify all components:
    • Is the article scholarly?
    • What is the problem/purpose?
    • What is(are) the research question(s)?
    • Who are the participants?
    • What are the ethical/cultural considerations?
    • What data /information was collected from participants?
    • How did the researchers describe the results/answer to the research question?
    • How does this research apply to the case study?

Required Resources

Kenny, M. C., & Winick, C. B. (2000). An integrative approach to play therapy with an autistic girl. International Journal of Play Therapy, 9(1), 11–33. doi:10.1037/h0089438

Note: You will access this article from the Walden Library databases.

Raff, J. (2018, January 3). How to read and understand a scientific article [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://violentmetaphors.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-article.pdf

Walden University. (n.d.). How do I verify that my article is peer reviewed? Retrieved August 1, 2019, from https://academicanswers.waldenu.edu/faq/72613  

Walden University Library. (n.d.). Verify peer review. Retrieved August 1, 2019, from https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/library/verifypeerreview  

Document: Scholarly Article Content Analysis Preparation Guide (PDF) 

Document: Scholarly Article Content Analysis Worksheet (Word document)

Required Media

Walden University Library. (n.d.). Anatomy of a research article. Retrieved from https://waldencss.adobeconnect.com/anatomyofaresearcharticle/ 

Note: if you are having difficulty viewing the required media above using Google Chrome as your browser, please visit http://academicanswers.waldenu.edu/faq/239615 for instructions on how to enable Flash.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2016). Literature review [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 8 minutes.

Accessible player  –Downloads– Download Video w/CC Download Audio Download Transcript

Credit: Provided courtesy of the Laureate International Network of Universities.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2017k). Purpose of research [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 15 minutes. This media piece is also in the resources of Week 2.

Accessible player  –Downloads– Download Video w/CC Download Audio Download Transcript

Credit: Provided courtesy of the Laureate International Network of Universities.

Literature Review

© 2017 Laureate Education, Inc.

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Literature Review Program Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Have you ever thought about a literature review as representing your intellectual heritage or intellectual genealogy? In his exploration of the purpose of a literature review, Dr. Patton explains this interesting perspective. He also points out common errors to avoid when undertaking a literature review.

MICHAEL QUINN PATTON: One of the things that we do as scholar practitioners is look at the knowledge created by other people. And we draw on that knowledge as a way of positioning our own work and understanding where our contribution to knowledge, our own research, fits in that larger tradition. This is often referred to as the literature review. And the way that you go about knowing the knowledge that others have generated, that you’re going to build on and contribute to, is to conduct a literature review.

I tend not to like that terminology, because it sounds like the purpose is to review the literature. Literature review is actually a means to another end. And it’s that end, it’s that purpose of conducting the literature review that I want to focus on.

The purpose is for you to understand your intellectual heritage, your intellectual genealogy. Anytime we undertake an inquiry into a particular issue, we are building on the knowledge of others. And we need to know what that knowledge is. It’s part of our obligation as scholars, is to understand what work has come before us, what concepts we’ve inherited, what methods we’ve inherited, what measures we’ve inherited. Some of which we’ve adopted, some of which we’ve parted from. But we need to know that.

Because at the end of a program of study, a master’s degree, a program of doctoral inquiry, you’re going to be expected to be able to locate your work within that tradition. And so it means that you need to be able to establish the people who formulated the basic distinctions that you’re drawing on.

Let me share with you some of the mistakes that I, from my point of view, find students engaging in when they undertake the literature review. One of these is to simply do an internet search to see how many articles they can find on a topic. Where they think that the game is how many citations you can come up with to show that you’ve done the literature review.

This isn’t a quantitative game. It’s not something where the number of sources is important. It’s the quality of those sources and your engagement with them, that you are able to engage with what other people have done and understand what’s relevant, what’s not relevant to your own area of inquiry. So that you’re positioning yourself out of those traditions that others have engaged in.

 

 

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A second error is to think that the game is to position your work as unique. It is to try to find something that nobody else has ever done, to say nobody else has ever studied this before. Likewise, for any given field, there are burning questions that have defined that field.

In sociology, which is my own field, all sociology derives from what we call the Hobbesian question of order. What holds society together? Why doesn’t society fall apart? Every sociological question stems from that question that Hobbes asked. And therefore, if you look at sociology articles in the premier journals, the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, you’ll find that they typically begin with a reference to Hobbes or to Durkheim time or to Weber or to Marx who were asking the original burning questions in psychology and sociology.

In psychology, you’ll find original references to Freud and to Adler and to Jung that go back to things like the notion of the unconscious. And whether you agree or disagree with various aspects of Freudian theory, the notion that there’s an unconscious mind and that that unconscious mind makes a difference in what we do is a part of what has framed modern psychology.

And so you stand on the shoulders of people who are trying to understand how the mind works, and who have divided off from those original classical theorists and researchers about how the mind works. The burning question in psychology is, why do we behave as we behave? How do we think and feel? How do we know and engage the world? And so you need to know who the classic people were who were asking those questions, who their disciples were, what were the splits along the world, along the journey where one group went in this direction and another group went in another direction?

Up to the more recent published research, and up to the kind of work that’s now going on that may not yet be published, where you can get in touch with those people who are engaged in research now. Find out what the funded research is from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Mental Health, the major foundations. And find out what cutting edge work is going on so that you have a full scale genealogy of what your intellectual tradition is.

When you have finished that inquiry over a period of time, you’re able to then say, these are the people on whose shoulders I stand. These are the intellectual traditions that I’m a part of. This is my intellectual DNA. Here is what I’ve drawn on. Here are the places where I’m departing from others. And here is where I’m going to make my contribution. That’s the purpose of a literature review. You’re positioning yourself in a stream of knowledge, in a flow of knowledge.

As a part of that work, a third error that I think students often make is to only read second-hand and third-hand accounts of the classics. The classics got to be

 

 

Literature Review

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classics for a reason. People over the years read those works and found the thinking in them profound.

Yes, in some cases, the findings may be out of date. But a part of what you ought to be learning as you engage in a literature review and in your intellectual history is not just the specific findings. You are learning how scholars think. You’re learning how scientists think. You’re learning how a researcher thinks.

So read those works not only for what they found out. Read them for their methods. Look for the methods-findings linkage. How did particular findings yield and come from particular methods? How did those methods develop over time? And how did the classic writers think about things, inquire into things?

So as you’re engaging in that, it has two streams that you’re paying attention to. One is the theoretical stream. What are the findings? What are the constructs that you’ve inherited? And the other is the methodological stream. What are the methods of inquiries, the measures, the instrumentation, the ways of going about recording what you observe that we’ve inherited?

Both of those are your rich inheritance as scholar practitioners. And one of the things that you ought to come out of your education with is knowing what that intellectual heritage is, both conceptual and methodological, and then where you’re going to make your contribution.