How To Read A Sociological Journal Article

How to Read a Sociological Journal Article

Professor Mikaila Mariel Lemonik Arthur

When you start reading a scholarly journal article, you should begin by reading the abstract. Almost all scholarly journal articles have abstracts; these are 100-200 word paragraphs at the beginning of the article that will introduce you to the topic, methods, and findings of the article. When you are doing your own research, the abstract will tell you if the article in question is likely to be useful for your project. When the article is assigned reading, the abstract is still worthwhile—it provides signposts for what you will find inside.

When you have completed reading a sociological journal article, you want to be able to answer a set of key questions about the content and findings of the article.

1)    What is the topic of the article? If you were a librarian or a bookstore owner and you had to place this article on the shelf, how would you categorize it?

2)    What is the research question and/or hypothesis? What does the author want to find out, and what does s/he expect to find? There may well be more than one research question or hypothesis—be sure to locate them all.

3)    What have prior researchers said about these questions? How does the author propose to expand or improve on prior research?

4)    What methodological strategies did the author use? There will often be a section called methods, so look at that. In addition, you should identify where the data came from. As you become more skilled in research methodology, you should take the time to consider whether you think the methodology and data used in the article was good, or whether there might have been better sampling strategies, data sources, measurement strategies, or methodologies for the project at hand.

5)    What were the main findings of the research? What was the answer to each research question, and was each hypothesis confirmed or disconfirmed? Based on these findings, what sorts of arguments and conclusions does the author make?

6)    What suggestions does the author make for future research? If you are looking for a research project, this is always a good place to turn for ideas!

7)    What sorts of limitations or shortcomings do you find in the project? These might be methodological problems, ways in which you disagree with the author’s interpretation of the data and findings, areas in which the study could have been expanded, or any other issues. Sometimes the author will even identify some of these limitations her or himself.

8)    What can you take away from this article? How is it connected to the research you are doing? How is it connected to the learning goals for the course you’ve read it in? Why have you read it? How does it contribute to an ongoing scholarly dialogue about a particular topic or issue. Of course, sometimes articles really are not that useful. However, in most cases you should be able to identify why the article matters and how it can be useful to you. In research methods courses, you should particularly focus on what the article can teach you about how to do research.

9)    If you are reading this article as part of a research project, you should be sure to skim through the bibliography, keeping in mind what you read in the literature review. Are there any references that might be worth getting your hands on?

As you read the article, you should take notes on key elements of importance. I recommend that you avoid highlighting—the tendency when students highlight is to highlight almost everything, because it all seems important (or on the other hand to highlight nothing because the article is boring!). Instead, choose one of the strategies below:

s  Take a separate sheet of paper or open a word processing document and keep your notes in that document. Aim to write about one type-written page or two hand-written pages of notes for your typical 20-30 page journal article—the same goes for textbook chapters! In your notes, write a short summary of the article, any key insights the article suggested, ideas about how this article might be useful for your learning or research, and answers to the reading questions listed above.

s  Invest in some sticky notes, preferably the kind you can write on and preferably in a variety of different colors. Flag key insights with sticky notes and use different colors to indicate different sorts of issues in the article. For instance, you might use yellow notes to mark facts and findings, blue notes to mark places where you were confused or want to know more, white notes to indicate main points and research methods, etc. Because you can write on the notes, you can indicate what drew your attention to this particular section, and you can also indicate which of the reading questions this section answers.

s  If you must highlight: invest in a set of 5-6 different colored highlighters. Then, even if you have the tendency to over-highlight, you can still quickly find the material you are looking for. For instance, you might highlight the topic and research question in yellow, the methodological strategies and data sources in green, the findings in blue, connections to past or future research in purple, useful bibliographic sources in orange, and other things worth noting in pink. If you highlight, don’t forget about taking notes! You can write in the margin of the article to remind yourself why you highlighted something, to ask questions or grapple with the text, or to record insights that occurred to you while reading. In addition, you should write a short summary of the article and how it relates to your learning and/or research goals at the end of the article.

s  If you are a more visual learner, you may want to consider making diagrams to help you organize your thoughts, such as venn diagrams, arrow diagrams of theoretical models, maps and timelines, or tables with different categories.

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Finally, a time-saving tip: be sure to use your first time through to record a complete bibliographic citation to the article. Articles don’t always print out with all the bibliographic material on them, so use this time to find any part of the citation that’s missing. If you take notes on separate paper, include the bibliographic citation on that separate paper so you always have it if you lose track of the original article. If you write down any quotations or paraphrases, be sure to note the page numbers so you can include them in the in-text citations as necessary—this is a key step in avoiding plagiarism!