Psychology -- Reed-Sallee

Reading scholarly research is difficult. Expect to be confused and even intimidated by it. Everyone is at first. Reading research is an active process -- you should be asking yourself questions about the researchers' choices and conclusions -- are there things they didn't take into account or are they making larger conclusions than the research justifies?

A few general tips:

• Don't read journal articles straight through from beginning to end. You read select sections out of order.

• Read the ABSTRACT to decide whether or not to read the entire article. When reading the article, see if the content matches the abstract's summary.

• Try to understand new words from context -- but expect to look up everything you don't understand -- and expect that to be a lot.

• DON'T get discouraged. Focus on the parts you understand and work outwards from those.

Use these templates to help you understand what your articles are about. Use the infographic on Rough Guide to Bad Science to understand the types of questions you should be thinking about as you read.