Reference: Give a complete APA type reference, e.g.Lewis, J.A. (2011). Farewell to motherhood and apple pie: Families in the postmodern era. The FamilyJournal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 1,337-338. (Please note the use of lower andupper case lettering and that the title of the journal and the volume number are both italicized.)Purposes for Doing the Research: Give the author or authors’ purposes for doing the research. Thepurpose or purposes are usually identified early on in the article. Often it is part of the introduction;sometimes there may be a heading entitled purpose. Occasionally the purpose may not be well spelledout; then you must search for the purpose.Research Questions: There may be one research question or more than one. Try to identify the specificresearch questions which are the driving force for the study. Sometimes these are quoted in the articleand at other times the research questions may be buried in the article. In such cases it is your job todiscover the research questions. Research questions do much the same thing for qualitative researchthat hypotheses do for quantitative research. Metaphorically, hypotheses in quantitative research canbe thought of as the drivers on a locomotive—they push the train forward. In some studies the researchquestion is the same as the interview question.Subjects/Participants: Give the specific data about the subjects: the number, sex, ages, race, ethnicity,education and other data which is available. Be as specific as possible, if the author does not includemuch of this information, you cannot report it.13Sampling Procedures: Discuss how the author obtained participants for the study. Try to be as specificas possible about the sampling procedures. Frequently the author may not tell much about howsubjects were secured; then you can only tell what was reported.Data Collection Methodology: Be as specific as possible about the methods the author used incollecting the data. Data collection can take any one or a combination of forms such as videotaping,audio recording, interviews, questionnaires, data retrieval files, observations, etc. Were interviewstranscribed? Were videos analyzed?Data Analysis Methodology: What methods were used to analyze the data? Did the researcher use acomputer program of some kind? Some authors may use a color coding method or simply a cut-and paste method for analyzing the transcriptions. Sometimes word counting of some form may be used fordata analysis. Be as specific as possible about how the researcher attempted to make sense out of thedata collected.Findings: What were the findings as reported by the author/researcher?Critique: This is a place for you to critique the study. Be creative in your thinking as a consumer ofquality research.
