Questions to Consider When Reading a Research Report

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Questions to consider when reading a research report

When you read a research paper on first and second language acquisition, consider the following questions: 

 1.     What is the research question (or problem, or hypotheses)? Is it interesting?

 2.   What is the context of the research? Is it appropriate for the question being asked?

 3.  What theoretical framework is used to ground the research question? Does it provide an adequate 
      foundation?

 4.  Who are the subjects? How many are there? How were they selected? What are their 
      characteristics? Are the subjects appropriate for answering the question?

 5.  If the study is quantitative, what are the variables? How are they defined? How are they
      measured? Are the measures used valid and reliable? What analyses were done? Are they
      appropriate?

 6.  If the study is qualitative, what kind of data were collected? How were data collected? How were
      they analyzed?

 7.  What are the results of the analyses? What conclusions are drawn from the results? Are the
      conclusions justified? If generalizations are made, are they appropriate?

 8.  What contributions does the study make to our knowledge of second language acquisition?

 9.  What implications does the researcher draw? Are they justified? Are there other implications that
      could be drawn?

Comments

  1. Unknown7:56 PM

    Very interesting article, very useful for many types of research

    ReplyDelete

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