The Three Key Elements to Reading Research Reports

Research papers are written so arcanely that even professionals find them tedious and replete with circuitous sentences that flesh out the page count. Faced with this roadblock to knowledge, many will believe they are incapable or don’t have sufficient education to read and understand a research paper. Don’t think that way.

One of the foremost psychologists who made his research papers more than understandable was Lewis Terman, an educational psychologist. Perhaps it was his field that directed his writing, but whatever it was, I always found Terman fun to read, and, in the process, I learned things. Should curiosity push you to read his work, you can download his free “The Measurement of Intelligence.” I’d suggest his papers rather than the book.

Following my own advice, I’ll get right to the heart of the matter, how to read a research paper in a few steps that won’t leave you bleary-eyed. No, you do not need to know what a “p” value is or any of the math involved. Leave that to anyone who wishes to explore these areas.

What you want to know are three simple things; what did the research set out to do, how did they do it, and what were the results? Also, you’d like to know where they felt they failed or what future journey research in that area should take.

One of my professors in graduate school took pity on his new charges and passed out a paper explaining how to read research reports. I don’t have it, but I remember the simple basics of it.

The Abstract at the beginning should squeeze everything nicely into a summary of the entire project. Here you find the fundamental question on the chopping block for exploration. What were they looking for?

Next, you can skip to the Methods and check out a few essential areas; the sample (and its size) or “N,” how it was collected or recruited, and whether there was a control and an experimental group. Controls mean nothing was done to them (or a ruse was used), but the experimental group was exposed to something to check their reaction. Also, who funded the research? Very important to consider any influence on the results.

The third thing you jump to is Conclusions. What were the results of their project, and did they find or not find what they sought? It’s a bit of a reveal, and researchers must admit failure if the study or experiment was published.

They will also show what future research in this area should explore (great ideas for dissertation topics), either using a type of spin-off of this study/experiment or a different design with additional factors included. What did they fail to consider, and what was left out and needs to be explored?

No, this is not the most erudite bit of information on reading research. It is meant as an introduction to quickly picking up facts for a basic understanding of the work.