journal critique on the article “School Counselor Beliefs about ASCA national model school counseling program components
journal critique on the article “School Counselor Beliefs about ASCA national model school counseling program components
Project description
So your assignment is to critique a journal article. This handout will give you a few guidelines to
follow as you go. But wait, what kind of a journal article is it: an empirical/research article, or a
review of literature? Some of the guidelines offered here will apply to critiques of all kinds of
articles, but each type of article may provoke questions that are especially pertinent to that type
and no other. Read on.
First of all, for any type of journal article your critique should include some basic information:
1. Name(s) of the author(s)
2. Title of article
3. Title of journal, volume number, date, month and page numbers
4. Statement of the problem or issue discussed
5. The authors purpose, approach or methods, hypothesis, and major conclusions.
The bulk of your critique, however, should consist of your qualified opinion of the article.
Read the article you are to critique once to get an overview. Then read it again, critically. At this
point you may want to make some notes to yourself on your copy (not the librarys copy, please).
The following are some questions you may want to address in your critique no matter what type
of article you are critiquing. (Use your discretion. These points dont have to be discussed in
this order, and some may not be pertinent to your particular article.)
1. Is the title of the article appropriate and clear?
2. Is the abstract specific, representative of the article, and in the correct form?
3. Is the purpose of the article made clear in the introduction?
4. Do you find errors of fact and interpretation? (This is a good one! You wont believe how
often authors misinterpret or misrepresent the work of others. You can check on this by
looking up for yourself the references the author cites.)
5. Is all of the discussion relevant?
6. Has the author cited the pertinent, and only the pertinent, literature? If the author has
included inconsequential references, or refere references, or references that are not pertinent, suggest deleting
them.
7. Have any ideas been overemphasized or underemphasized? Suggest specific revisions.
8. Should some sections of the manuscript be expanded, condensed or omitted?
9. Are the authors statements clear? Challenge ambiguous statements. Suggest by
examples how clarity can be achieved, but do not merely substitute your style for the
authors.
10. What underlying assumptions does the author have?
11. Has the author been objective in his or her discussion of the topic?2
In addition, here are some questions that are more specific to empirical/research articles. (Again,
use your discretion.)
1. Is the objective of the experiment or of the observations important for the field?
2. Are the experimental methods described adequately?
3. Are the study design and methods appropriate for the purposes of the study?
4. Have the procedures been presented in enough detail to enable a reader to duplicate them?
(Another good one! Youd be surprised at the respectable researchers who cut corners in
their writing on this point.)
5. Scan and spot-check calculations. Are the statistical methods appropriate?
6. Do you find any content repeated or duplicated? A common fault is repetition in the text
of data in tables or figures. Suggest that tabular data be interpreted of summarized, nor
merely repeated, in the text.
A word about your style: let your presentation be well-reasoned and objective. If you
passionately disagree (or agree) with the author, let your passion inspire you to new heights of
thorough research and reasoned argument.
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the journal article being critiqued is “school counselor beliefs about ASCA national model school counseling program components using the SCPCS” I have the article and can send it if necessary.