Assignment 2

Week Description: Research Article Critiques As you learned in an earlier course, the skills involved in critiquing articles, writing a literature review that supports the existence of a dissertation-worthy research problem, and proposing, designing, and doing research are all related. They have in common: knowledge of research design, validity concepts, and test construction; use of logic in reasoning; and the ability to organize thinking. Reading well, critically, thoughtfully, and with purpose is fundamental to doing a dissertation. Business Administration scholars must critique and evaluate research reports because truth, such as it is in business administration, is the result of a collective, critical process. You cannot assess the state of knowledge in an area simply by collecting conclusions from research articles. A literature review is not simply a collection of reports of conclusions from research articles, much less, an account of what others have done. As a novice researcher preparing to make a scientific contribution, you are obligated to critically analyze previous research and reach and defend your own conclusions about what is known and not known in your area. At this point in the program, you have been implicitly or explicitly introduced to a number of means of analyzing or interrogating research articles. “Interrogating” is perhaps more useful, as it helps you see that you understand an article and evaluate a study by asking questions of it. The questions you ask depend on your purpose in reading an article. A good question to ask yourself before reading an article is: What do I want to learn from reading this article? Below is a list of approaches to reading and critiquing research articles that you can choose from and mix and match as best fits you and your purposes. For general guidance on how to read academic works, see the Monash University site and the first three sections of Little & Parker (2010). Approaches to Critiquing...