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reading a scholarly article is different than reading a novel
You don't have to
read every word from beginning to end
at least not to start with. I'm going
walk you through how I read a scholarly article in order to help you increase
your comprehension
while saving you some time. Before you begin reading be sure you have a clear
topic statement or research question in mind
Mine is, how to use social networking sites
like Facebook and YouTube contribute to bullying in schools
and how can this situation be prevented? Here I've identified some search
keywords which I've used to find a scholarly article
in an EBSCO host database. The article I've chosen
is called "parental mediation online activities and cyber-bullying"
written by a researcher named Mesch
and this is from the journal Cyber Psychology and Behavior
Let's open up the full text of this article and have a look
The first step is to read the Abstract
this is a summary of the article which will help me to decide if it's relevant
to my topic
This article is a research study on a fairly new topic in the field of psychology
It looks like they found that parenting is an important factor in cyberbullying
By the way it's good to make note of key terms like "cyberbullying" that the
professionals are using
this term could be useful for future searches
based on the abstract I can see that this article may help me answer my
research question
so I'll go ahead and have a closer look. Rather than reading this nine-page
article word-for-word, I'll start
by reading the introduction. I'll just let my eyes can quickly over the sentences
looking for key ideas. I may want to paraphrase or quote these ideas later so
if I were reading this in print
I would highlight or underline them. I also notice that the author frequently
refers to other research studies
This is common practice in scholarly literatur; the author is providing me some context
by summarizing what else has been published on this topic
If I wish, I may look up his cited articles later on
Here he gets into parental mediation, one of his main points
he also points out the potential flaws in his study
which gives him points for honesty. Still, this article went through the process of
peer review, so I can be pretty confident of his findings. Speaking of findings
there are some key sections that are typical of research articles like this
we've seen the Abstract and Introduction
you also find a C onclusion section near the end
in may be called something else; in this case it's called Discussion
but it basically tells us what the researcher discovered in doing his study
I'm going to skip to this section right now. Remember we're not reading a novel so
it's okay to peek at the ending
some of Mesch's findings sound interesting to me so I highlight or underline them
Since he's peaked my curiosity about rules for visiting web sites
I'll go back to the Results section to read his findings in more detail
he goes into a lot of statistics which is typical of a research study
sometimes I read the narrative discussion of the results
but sometimes I glance first at a stats table to get a quick visual overview
For instance I quickly noticed that kids with more highly educated parents
weren't necessarily less likely to be bullied. I can read the narrative
description to find out why
Ah, here's where he talks about parental roles and how they seem to have a
beneficial effect
I'll probably read the results in more detail
but I should point out the Methods section; this section will tell me what
kind of research the author did,
a survey in this case, how it was conducted, and details about the participants
After discussing the results of his study the author recommends further
research that his colleagues in the field may want to do
Finally, don't overlook the References section at the end
This isn't just here to impress you with how much doctor Mesch has read on this topic;
this list and the accompanying footnotes allow you to read on this topic in more
detail if you wish
That's part of the scholarly process -- helping others learn while advancing the
level of knowledge in one's
field of study. So, having read through this article for just a few minutes
i believe I have an excellent material to quote or summarize in my research paper
Of course I may want to go back and read this article from start to finish,
but by knowing what sections to look in and having a clear research focus
I've saved myself some time and have gotten some good results
If you need further help finding scholarly journal articles
please view the appropriate video tutorials or contact the librarians
at the reference desk