Discussion Questions

  1. A good place to start developing your critical skills would be with one of the articles reviewed in this chapter. Try reading one, and fill in the answers to the article review questions that I did not cover (see Appendix A). Do you agree with my answers to the other questions? Could you add some points to my critique or to the lessons on research design that I drew from these critiques?
  2. Read the journal article “Marital Disruption and Depression in a Community Sample,” by Aseltine and Kessler, in the September 1993 issue of Journal of Health and Social Behavior. How effective is the article in conveying the design and findings of the research? Could the article’s organization be improved at all? Are there bases for disagreement about the interpretation of the findings? Did reading the full article increase your opinion of its value?
  3. Rate four journal articles on the study site, at edge.sagepub .com/schutt9e, for the overall quality of the research and for the effectiveness of the writing and data displays. Discuss how each could have been improved.