How to Critique Journal Articles in the Social Sciences, Second Edition

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I have read many self-help books to help improve my research skills. This book comes as one of the conceptually solid guides. However, if you are looking for a how-to book, one critiquing a research paper, this book is not an exhaustive book.Strengths:This book introduces you to the various sections of a typical research paper and points out what is expected in the various sections. For instance, the book does a good job on conceptualizing topics of research, conducting literature reviews, and questioning methodologies. Moreover, typical political and ethical issues in research are also addressed.Weaknesses:This book assumes a reader has prior research skills and wants a book that fleshes out concepts. It is not a self-help book to guide a novice researcher to critique a paper effectively. In instances where examples are cited for critique, the author does the critique at a high level. It would be helpful if detail explanations are given on how to approach a critique at each section of a paper.The Analysis section and conceptualizing a research topic need improvements. For example, the author could guide students on how to design research questions or hypotheses of a research paper, or how to identify and critique those stated in a research paper. The intent of such an approach will be to situate the criticism off the bat.The Ethical and political sections require detailed illustrations to assist a reader understand the context of ethics and politics. I understand the context of these are unique to each research and a generalized recipe cannot be provided for all research cases. However, providing basic approaches to navigate these terrains will be immensely useful.For anyone seeking a broad horizon of a research paper, this book is recommended. You will be able to get started with doing some level of critiquing for every section of a social research paper. Using your own curiosity to fill in the lack of detailed examples in this text will definitely compensate for the few examples the author provides

I read the entire book in about Two hours. The offer repeated himself on multiplications almost in every single chapter. You could literally take this book and Cut out half of it and it would be so much better. How many times do you have to say that research is better than just typical reading because to me that that’s an obvious. But the author felt the Need to say this every single chapter