October 28, 2024 • 22 mins
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What if you could unlock the secrets to reading scholarly research articles as easily as a captivating novel? This episode promises just that, equipping you with the skills to discern credible academic work from unreliable sources. Discover how to utilize tools like Google Scholar to access the wealth of knowledge hidden within peer-reviewed studies without spending a dime. We break down the anatomy of research articles, shedding light on how to efficiently navigate sections like the abstract, methods, and results, ensuring you're armed with the critical thinking necessary to interpret scientific evidence accurately.
Embark on a journey through the complex world of research methodologies, where we unravel the distinctions between qualitative and quantitative studies. Gain insight into why understanding the methods section is vital for grasping the validity of a study’s findings. With practical examples, we illustrate how to interpret graphical data and comprehend the importance of statistical terms like "significant difference." By connecting findings back to their hypotheses, we underscore the transformative power of effective discussions and conclusions in contributing to scientific fields and identifying areas ripe for future exploration.
Elevate your research article reading game by setting clear objectives and appreciating the nuances of academic inquiry. We share strategies for sifting through multiple articles to develop a well-rounded perspective, urging you to challenge sensational headlines and seek out original research for a more accurate understanding of complex topics. With stories from dissertation experiences, this episode aims to inspire a lifelong love of learning, encouraging you to question, verify, and explore the depths of scholarly discovery. Stay curious and empowered on this enlightening research journey.
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
There is a lot of headlines out there that you may
read and think man, this saysthat research recently found, or
that research says that coffeeis linked to cancer, or that red
meat is bad for you, or X, y, zthere's a hundred million
things that's out there on theinternet that claims that
(00:20):
research has said it.
But is it true?
In today's episode, I'm goingto walk you through how you can
actually read research articlesyourself to get a better
understanding of what researchactually says, instead of just
trusting the news that you hear.
All right, so what is ascholarly research article?
(00:41):
Scholarly is the key word thatwe want to understand here.
A scholarly article is anarticle that has been written by
someone who is a scholar or ahigh level typically a PhD,
sometimes a master's in theirfield of study, who has
performed a rigorous researchstudy and that study has been
(01:05):
submitted for peer review.
In the peer review process,people other experts, other
people with similar credentialsin the field, look at the study
most of the time anonymously.
They don't know who has donethe study and they give their
critique on the study before itis ever approved to be put into
(01:25):
scholarly journals.
So that might sound a lot ofinformation or sound like a lot
of information, but here's whatyou need to know.
A scholarly article isn't justsomething someone thought of.
It's been put through somepretty rigorous circumstances.
It has to be held to a certainlevel of standard and then it is
published in books, articles,journals that are considered
(01:51):
very reputable sources.
So where can you find some ofthese scholarly articles?
A great free place that you cango is Google Scholar.
So you can just go to googlecom, type in Google Scholar and
it'll show you a database thatGoogle has collected of
scholarly articles.
Now, not every scholarlyarticle that you find is going
(02:14):
to be free to access.
A lot of the times, many of thescholarly articles, you have to
be a student or a researcher ora professor or an alumni in
order to get access to some ofthe bigger databases of
scholarly journals and scholarlyarticles.
But on Google Scholar you canlook for studies by typing in
(02:36):
kind of what you may want toknow.
So for my dissertation, forexample, I did a lot of research
on goal attainment, onself-esteem, on body esteem.
So I would go to Google Scholarand type in those phrases and I
can even look at the years thatthe studies came out.
I can narrow it down to thepast five years or in the past
(02:58):
year, or, if I want to look atthe whole past 50 years of what
the research has said over time.
You can narrow or expand theyear search based on what you're
looking for and then it willpopulate scholarly articles
right there in Google Scholar.
Now sometimes you'll be able toactually open the PDF right
(03:19):
there and you can get itcompletely free, but other times
you have to have a login to aspecial site that is a database
of scholarly journals which mostof the time is only for people
who are in academia or thealumni, which is kind of
frustrating.
A lot of times they want you topay.
Like, if you're not a member,then they'll say you have to pay
(03:39):
$20 for this article.
I would highly encourage you tonever pay.
It's highly not worth it, orit's very likely not worth it
for you to pay for it.
Just really try and look throughsome of these more free
articles if you can.
Now, this is how you find it.
You can also look.
I believe there's some otherplaces.
You can go to Google and typein how to get access to free
(04:01):
scholarly articles.
There's probably some of theother larger databases that will
provide or allow you to get afree account.
Propublica might, but there aresome options that you could
look through Now.
When you open up the article,you may see your eyes start to
glaze over and the words on thepage become extremely blurry,
(04:23):
because it all seems likegibberish.
Scholarly articles are notmeant to be read like you would
be reading Good Housekeeping orGQ magazine.
They can be very, very boring.
So I'm going to teach youthroughout this episode how you
can kind of read through it inthe quickest way possible, in
(04:45):
the most efficient way possible.
But for the first couple oftimes you read a scholarly
article, I would recommend thatyou read it all the way through
so that you gain an appreciationfor just how much work the
authors and the publishers ofthe study have done in setting
up what they're trying to do.
So ultimately, when you look ata scholarly article, you're
(05:07):
going to see there's the titleof the article.
Sometimes they try and bereally cute with it and cute
like for academics, which iskind of cheesy, but other times
it's just pretty straight intothe point.
Either way, it's going to saythe title of the article.
It's going to say some keywordsmost of the time, like body
esteem or self esteem, kind ofdepending on what it is that
(05:29):
you're looking for, and thenit's going to have the author's
names, and there's typicallyseveral authors that have worked
together to publish this study.
You're then going to find thatit has an introduction.
It then has methods.
It gets kind of gets more intowhy the study was needed, how
they're going to do the study,how they recruited participants,
what they did, what theparticipants actually went
(05:51):
through, and then it's going togive the results of the study as
well as future directions andconclusions.
Those are the main parts thatevery scholarly article is going
to include.
There's also going to be anabstract scholarly article is
going to include.
There's also going to be anabstract.
Now, an abstract of thescholarly article is where it's
the last thing written.
So it takes the highlights ofthe entire paper and it puts
(06:14):
them into anywhere from three toeight or nine sentences.
The abstract really does giveyou the overall picture of what
the article is going to expandon.
So if you're trying to find out,is red meat bad for you?
Reading the abstract of eachpaper is going to help.
You see, did this study.
Even look at red meatconsumption.
(06:36):
How many participants did ithave?
Was it enough for me to evencare about what the results are
going to be?
And what were high level theresults?
And it will typically tell youon a high level, this study
found that there wasinsignificant conclusions as to
the presence of red meat in theadult diet as an example.
I totally made that up.
Don't know if it's true or notor if there's a study out there
(06:58):
that says something about it,but that's what the abstract is
going to tell you.
So when you're trying to find acouple of different articles,
when you're trying to reallyunderstand something, then the
abstract can be a quicker way tounderstand if this article is
worth your time to read morefully or if it's not really what
you're looking for and if youneed to move on.
The next part of the article isgoing to be the introduction.
(07:19):
So the introduction is reallywhere it explains the topic and
the current literature on thattopic.
So it's going to give a lot oftimes that introduction.
(07:48):
If self-esteem is kind of themain part of that title that
it's looking at, then it's goingto say here's what self-esteem
is.
Here is how self-esteem hasbeen researched in the past and
things that have been foundabout self-esteem, and it will
typically end with saying andthis is why we're studying
(08:12):
self-esteem for this specificarticle.
That then gets us into themethods.
So the methods is basically themethodology.
It is the way in which thecurrent study was set up.
It was the plan.
It was the plan for how theywere going to test these
subjects and then look at theresults.
Once the results came, themethod section is incredibly
(08:32):
important and here's why it's inthe method section that you
begin to understand what didthese people actually do?
How many of them were there andhow were they recruited?
So for a quantitative studythat's wanting to look at how
red meat is impacted or how theconsumption of red meat impacts
(08:54):
the American male or theAmerican population, as an
example, then in here, when yousee the methods, if you see that
this is a group of 12 peoplethat were studied for two weeks,
then you can begin to see hmm,this isn't really giving me the
depth and quality of studythat's going to give me any
(09:18):
confidence in what the outcomesare going to be.
Instead, what you really wantto look for are larger groups of
people You're wanting to lookfor in the hundreds, maybe even
the thousands.
Some studies can actually evenrecruit up to 10,000, maybe even
100,000 participants, based onwhat they're studying and how
they're gathering their data.
(09:38):
It's not always true that themore participants the better,
but the more participants, thehigher the study can be powered.
What does that mean?
A study being powered to acertain level means that it has
the power underneath it more orless to trust the results of the
study and it makes it, to acertain extent, more
(10:01):
generalizable to a largerpopulation.
So you really do want to findstudies that focus on more
people as opposed to very smallgroups of people.
The only caveat of that is goingto be if you're looking at a
qualitative study and aqualitative study really does
want to look at a smaller groupof people, but it's trying to
(10:25):
understand the phenomenologicalexperience, so the lived
experience of these people.
So instead of understanding howdid someone's self-esteem, or
did someone's self-esteemincrease over a two-week or
two-month or a two-year period,based on X, y or Z, a
qualitative study is going toask what did it feel like?
What did it feel like for thesepeople to have a change in
their self-esteem?
So it's wanting to understandmore of the why behind why
(10:47):
something happens as opposed towhat actually happened.
But the majority of researchstudies that you're likely going
to see reported on are going towhat actually happened.
But the majority of researchstudies that you're likely going
to see reported on are going tobe quantitative studies.
They're looking at largeamounts of data that can be more
generalized to a generalpopulation.
So, with all that being said,the methods section tells you
(11:07):
the materials that were used.
It's going to tell you this isthe survey or the assessment
that we used.
This was the validity andreliability of that assessment,
how the materials were prepared,the research protocol that was
used.
We brought them in and we hadthem do this in a lab this many
times over this many weeks.
That's what it's going to tellyou.
And then how the measurementswere made, and then what the
(11:30):
statistical test was thatanalyzed the data.
Now you don't have to geek outas much about the statistical
test that was used to look atthe data, but what you do want
to look for are words likesignificant.
There was a significantdifference.
There was a significant impacton the.
When it gets to the resultssection.
That's really what you'relooking for.
(11:51):
You're also going to see, underthe methodology, the breakdown
of participant demographics, soyou're going to understand how
many of the participants weremale versus female.
What the study is looking at,and what this is going to help
you learn and identify, is whowas assessed.
Because if you're looking forand this was an example of a
(12:22):
previous episode if you'relooking for how a training
program, a strength trainingprogram, might affect women, but
then you're looking at a bunchof data from a strength training
program that had 45 men and twowomen, then you're not really
going to get the specific answeryou're looking for in that
study, because there wasn'tenough women to get an
understanding of how it wouldaffect women.
(12:43):
So the population data isextremely important, especially
when you're trying to understandsomething that you're wanting
to apply to you or to a group ofpeople that you're looking at.
So then this leads us to theresults section.
Under the results, it gives youa lot of graphs, a lot of
tables at least it should and alot of these can be very
(13:04):
confusing because there's a lotof italicized letters, like an
italicized P or an italicized F,which means several different
things.
But the results section shouldpresent the findings of the
study in the graph form, butalso in written form that you'll
be able to read and understand,and it should also include
(13:26):
negative results.
If they didn't find anything,or if they actually found
something opposite of what theythought they would find, that
should be included in theresults section as well, but
probably where all of it comesto life is in the discussion
section.
So it's in this section thatthe problem is being addressed,
but without repeating theintroduction.
(13:46):
So, hey, here's a reminder ofwhat we were trying to study.
And then what did the resultstell us?
And they have a discussionabout it.
They talk about whether it waswhat they thought it would be or
what they didn't think it wouldbe, and it's not written in
first person.
No scholarly article is writtenin first person, so it's not
(14:06):
like they're going to be saying.
I really thought that I wasgoing to find this to be true
and, much to my dismay, itwasn't.
It will instead be saidsomething like the hypothesis
that started this study was, andwhat we found was that the
hypothesis could be accepted.
That's actually not even howthey say it.
(14:26):
They'll say it some other kindof convoluted way with, like,
the null hypothesis beingaccepted or the null hypothesis
being rejected, which basicallyjust means that the null
hypothesis for every researcher.
We go into our researchbelieving that the null
hypothesis is going to be true,so basically that there is not
(14:47):
going to be any findings, and so, but we want there to be
findings.
We all enter into our studiesbelieving that we're going to
find something really cool.
So when we do find something,instead of just accepting the
secondary hypothesis, we rejectthe null hypothesis.
So we thought nothing was goingto happen.
(15:10):
But that's rejected, whichmeans we actually did find
something.
But you're going to find that inthe results section of the
study and the discussion willtypically talk about the strong
points of the study and thenthat will lead to the conclusion
section.
Now, sometimes this is acompletely different part.
Sometimes it's right in therewith the discussion, but most of
(15:31):
the time it is a separate part,and the final part of a paper
is the conclusion.
So it summarizes the real keypoints of the study, how the
methodology was done, what thefindings were.
It talks about what futureresearch should look at based on
what the results of this paperwas, and ultimately it's a very,
very, very, very, very, very,very gives the importance of why
(15:54):
this study was so important.
So it's a wrap-up section, it'sthe conclusion section.
So then, ultimately, how shouldyou go about reading a research
paper?
The first one is to determineyour goal.
What is it you're wanting tofind?
What is it that you're wantingto understand?
Maybe you're wanting tounderstand how running may
(16:19):
impact someone over a longperiod of time, and so you
should go and go try GoogleScholar, and maybe you type in
running programs, studies onrunning programs, and you begin
to see what all is out there,and then you can refine the
search results based on whatyou're wanting to know, and then
(16:42):
you can read the abstract andunderstand is this really going
to give me what I need?
Is this worth spending my timereally fleshing out, or should I
continue to look for somedifferent articles?
Another thing that you can do asI said before, I recommend that
the first couple of articlesthat you ever read, you should
read all of the way through togain an appreciation for the art
of research.
But then from there, the bestway to read a research article
(17:03):
is the following you read thetitle, you read the abstract,
you read the conclusion, youactually start with the
conclusion, then you go back tothe methodology section.
So conclusion, back tomethodology, to understand who
all they looked at and how theylooked at them.
You may skim the discussion andyou may skim the introduction,
(17:25):
but the real meat and potatoesof the high points of the
articles are in the methodsection and in the conclusion
section.
So once you get more attuned atreading articles and what to
look for, you can just readthose two areas and really get a
better idea of the truefindings, and then you can
always read further into thediscussion or the introduction
(17:47):
if you want to make sure thatyou have the right understanding
and the right grasp on thattopic topic.
The other thing that you likelywant to do when you find a
research article is not to justread one and then believe that
you know everything about thatsubject.
It is pertinent to understandthat there are millions,
(18:09):
hundreds of millions of researcharticles.
There are tens of thousands ofresearch articles on the
specific subject that you arelikely wanting to understand,
and so it's important to look atarticles and studies that have
looked at different parts ofwhat you're wanting to study and
maybe even have different views.
This is what is so important inresearch is the ability to have
(18:36):
a strong conviction, but alsoto learn about what the opposite
conviction is and have thatspace in the middle where you
can have critical thinking aboutwhy the two can both be true in
research.
And so I highly encourage youto not just read one article,
get a variety, get a depth ofarticles so that you can really
(18:59):
have a deeper and better andtruer appreciation for the art
of research.
In fact, you'll know a goodresearcher when they are not
100% certain about a subjectthat they've probably spent
their whole career researching.
Because the thing about researchis, the more that you do, the
less you realize you know, butthe more you want to know, and
(19:23):
so you start looking at it andthinking about how it interacts
and how it impacts all of thesedifferent areas of life, and it
can really help to not justcontinue the love of learning
about the subject but anappreciation for people who have
different points of views thanyou do.
I know for me, when I was goingthrough especially the first
three chapters of mydissertation, which is the
(19:45):
introduction, the literaturereview and the methodology, I
had to look at differing pointsof view of my subject matter and
appreciate both of those, butalso then come to my own
reasoning as to why I ended upbelieving what I believed, but I
had to cite absolutelyeverything.
(20:06):
And this is the other thingthat I believe is really
important to understand aboutresearchers, at least when they
go through their initialdissertation process.
You don't get to become aresearcher and a PhD without
showing a chair, like acommittee of other people,
including a dissertation chair,a methodologist, a content
(20:28):
expert all of these people youhave to show them you know how
to do your work and it is veryrigorously looked at and a very
iterative approach the whole waythrough and so constantly,
throughout it, you're gettingfeedback, you're getting
questioned, you're gettingpushback as to why you need, why
you can't just say that, youcan't just state something and
(20:50):
not have a citation based inscholarly research to back up
what you said for every singlething.
There is not one sentence that Ihave been able to write in my
dissertation that I haven't.
That has come from just my ownbrain.
All of it I've had to provebecause it is mentioned in not
(21:11):
just one but multiple othersources, and what that does is
it begins to strip away bias.
You can never fully strip awaybias, however, when you actually
have to go and find thescholarly research to back up
what you're trying to do or whatyou're wanting to understand,
(21:32):
you really do refine how youthink and you begin to realize
that some of the big, grandiosestatements that people make are
not as cut and dry or as clearas what they say.
So, overall, find somethingthat you want to learn more of,
or maybe you're wanting tocross-check something that
you've read in a headline.
Go and find that article, readit for yourself so that you can
(21:54):
actually see what the researchsays, because spoiler alert 99%
of the time and that is 100%number that I made up 99% of the
time what they say in theheadlines is a very gross
oversimplification orunderestimation of what an
actual research study actuallysaid.
So go and look for yourself andthen hopefully this will
(22:19):
facilitate a love of learningand a love of reading research
in your own life.
I hope that this was helpfulfor you.
Until next week, stay strong.
There is a lot of headlines out there that you may
read and think man, this saysthat research recently found, or
that research says that coffeeis linked to cancer, or that red
meat is bad for you, or X, y, zthere's a hundred million
things that's out there on theinternet that claims that
(00:20):
research has said it.
But is it true?
In today's episode, I'm goingto walk you through how you can
actually read research articlesyourself to get a better
understanding of what researchactually says, instead of just
trusting the news that you hear.
All right, so what is ascholarly research article?
(00:41):
Scholarly is the key word thatwe want to understand here.
A scholarly article is anarticle that has been written by
someone who is a scholar or ahigh level typically a PhD,
sometimes a master's in theirfield of study, who has
performed a rigorous researchstudy and that study has been
(01:05):
submitted for peer review.
In the peer review process,people other experts, other
people with similar credentialsin the field, look at the study
most of the time anonymously.
They don't know who has donethe study and they give their
critique on the study before itis ever approved to be put into
(01:25):
scholarly journals.
So that might sound a lot ofinformation or sound like a lot
of information, but here's whatyou need to know.
A scholarly article isn't justsomething someone thought of.
It's been put through somepretty rigorous circumstances.
It has to be held to a certainlevel of standard and then it is
published in books, articles,journals that are considered
(01:51):
very reputable sources.
So where can you find some ofthese scholarly articles?
A great free place that you cango is Google Scholar.
So you can just go to googlecom, type in Google Scholar and
it'll show you a database thatGoogle has collected of
scholarly articles.
Now, not every scholarlyarticle that you find is going
(02:14):
to be free to access.
A lot of the times, many of thescholarly articles, you have to
be a student or a researcher ora professor or an alumni in
order to get access to some ofthe bigger databases of
scholarly journals and scholarlyarticles.
But on Google Scholar you canlook for studies by typing in
(02:36):
kind of what you may want toknow.
So for my dissertation, forexample, I did a lot of research
on goal attainment, onself-esteem, on body esteem.
So I would go to Google Scholarand type in those phrases and I
can even look at the years thatthe studies came out.
I can narrow it down to thepast five years or in the past
(02:58):
year, or, if I want to look atthe whole past 50 years of what
the research has said over time.
You can narrow or expand theyear search based on what you're
looking for and then it willpopulate scholarly articles
right there in Google Scholar.
Now sometimes you'll be able toactually open the PDF right
(03:19):
there and you can get itcompletely free, but other times
you have to have a login to aspecial site that is a database
of scholarly journals which mostof the time is only for people
who are in academia or thealumni, which is kind of
frustrating.
A lot of times they want you topay.
Like, if you're not a member,then they'll say you have to pay
(03:39):
$20 for this article.
I would highly encourage you tonever pay.
It's highly not worth it, orit's very likely not worth it
for you to pay for it.
Just really try and look throughsome of these more free
articles if you can.
Now, this is how you find it.
You can also look.
I believe there's some otherplaces.
You can go to Google and typein how to get access to free
(04:01):
scholarly articles.
There's probably some of theother larger databases that will
provide or allow you to get afree account.
Propublica might, but there aresome options that you could
look through Now.
When you open up the article,you may see your eyes start to
glaze over and the words on thepage become extremely blurry,
(04:23):
because it all seems likegibberish.
Scholarly articles are notmeant to be read like you would
be reading Good Housekeeping orGQ magazine.
They can be very, very boring.
So I'm going to teach youthroughout this episode how you
can kind of read through it inthe quickest way possible, in
(04:45):
the most efficient way possible.
But for the first couple oftimes you read a scholarly
article, I would recommend thatyou read it all the way through
so that you gain an appreciationfor just how much work the
authors and the publishers ofthe study have done in setting
up what they're trying to do.
So ultimately, when you look ata scholarly article, you're
(05:07):
going to see there's the titleof the article.
Sometimes they try and bereally cute with it and cute
like for academics, which iskind of cheesy, but other times
it's just pretty straight intothe point.
Either way, it's going to saythe title of the article.
It's going to say some keywordsmost of the time, like body
esteem or self esteem, kind ofdepending on what it is that
(05:29):
you're looking for, and thenit's going to have the author's
names, and there's typicallyseveral authors that have worked
together to publish this study.
You're then going to find thatit has an introduction.
It then has methods.
It gets kind of gets more intowhy the study was needed, how
they're going to do the study,how they recruited participants,
what they did, what theparticipants actually went
(05:51):
through, and then it's going togive the results of the study as
well as future directions andconclusions.
Those are the main parts thatevery scholarly article is going
to include.
There's also going to be anabstract scholarly article is
going to include.
There's also going to be anabstract.
Now, an abstract of thescholarly article is where it's
the last thing written.
So it takes the highlights ofthe entire paper and it puts
(06:14):
them into anywhere from three toeight or nine sentences.
The abstract really does giveyou the overall picture of what
the article is going to expandon.
So if you're trying to find out,is red meat bad for you?
Reading the abstract of eachpaper is going to help.
You see, did this study.
Even look at red meatconsumption.
(06:36):
How many participants did ithave?
Was it enough for me to evencare about what the results are
going to be?
And what were high level theresults?
And it will typically tell youon a high level, this study
found that there wasinsignificant conclusions as to
the presence of red meat in theadult diet as an example.
I totally made that up.
Don't know if it's true or notor if there's a study out there
(06:58):
that says something about it,but that's what the abstract is
going to tell you.
So when you're trying to find acouple of different articles,
when you're trying to reallyunderstand something, then the
abstract can be a quicker way tounderstand if this article is
worth your time to read morefully or if it's not really what
you're looking for and if youneed to move on.
The next part of the article isgoing to be the introduction.
(07:19):
So the introduction is reallywhere it explains the topic and
the current literature on thattopic.
So it's going to give a lot oftimes that introduction.
(07:48):
If self-esteem is kind of themain part of that title that
it's looking at, then it's goingto say here's what self-esteem
is.
Here is how self-esteem hasbeen researched in the past and
things that have been foundabout self-esteem, and it will
typically end with saying andthis is why we're studying
(08:12):
self-esteem for this specificarticle.
That then gets us into themethods.
So the methods is basically themethodology.
It is the way in which thecurrent study was set up.
It was the plan.
It was the plan for how theywere going to test these
subjects and then look at theresults.
Once the results came, themethod section is incredibly
(08:32):
important and here's why it's inthe method section that you
begin to understand what didthese people actually do?
How many of them were there andhow were they recruited?
So for a quantitative studythat's wanting to look at how
red meat is impacted or how theconsumption of red meat impacts
(08:54):
the American male or theAmerican population, as an
example, then in here, when yousee the methods, if you see that
this is a group of 12 peoplethat were studied for two weeks,
then you can begin to see hmm,this isn't really giving me the
depth and quality of studythat's going to give me any
(09:18):
confidence in what the outcomesare going to be.
Instead, what you really wantto look for are larger groups of
people You're wanting to lookfor in the hundreds, maybe even
the thousands.
Some studies can actually evenrecruit up to 10,000, maybe even
100,000 participants, based onwhat they're studying and how
they're gathering their data.
(09:38):
It's not always true that themore participants the better,
but the more participants, thehigher the study can be powered.
What does that mean?
A study being powered to acertain level means that it has
the power underneath it more orless to trust the results of the
study and it makes it, to acertain extent, more
(10:01):
generalizable to a largerpopulation.
So you really do want to findstudies that focus on more
people as opposed to very smallgroups of people.
The only caveat of that is goingto be if you're looking at a
qualitative study and aqualitative study really does
want to look at a smaller groupof people, but it's trying to
(10:25):
understand the phenomenologicalexperience, so the lived
experience of these people.
So instead of understanding howdid someone's self-esteem, or
did someone's self-esteemincrease over a two-week or
two-month or a two-year period,based on X, y or Z, a
qualitative study is going toask what did it feel like?
What did it feel like for thesepeople to have a change in
their self-esteem?
So it's wanting to understandmore of the why behind why
(10:47):
something happens as opposed towhat actually happened.
But the majority of researchstudies that you're likely going
to see reported on are going towhat actually happened.
But the majority of researchstudies that you're likely going
to see reported on are going tobe quantitative studies.
They're looking at largeamounts of data that can be more
generalized to a generalpopulation.
So, with all that being said,the methods section tells you
(11:07):
the materials that were used.
It's going to tell you this isthe survey or the assessment
that we used.
This was the validity andreliability of that assessment,
how the materials were prepared,the research protocol that was
used.
We brought them in and we hadthem do this in a lab this many
times over this many weeks.
That's what it's going to tellyou.
And then how the measurementswere made, and then what the
(11:30):
statistical test was thatanalyzed the data.
Now you don't have to geek outas much about the statistical
test that was used to look atthe data, but what you do want
to look for are words likesignificant.
There was a significantdifference.
There was a significant impacton the.
When it gets to the resultssection.
That's really what you'relooking for.
(11:51):
You're also going to see, underthe methodology, the breakdown
of participant demographics, soyou're going to understand how
many of the participants weremale versus female.
What the study is looking at,and what this is going to help
you learn and identify, is whowas assessed.
Because if you're looking forand this was an example of a
(12:22):
previous episode if you'relooking for how a training
program, a strength trainingprogram, might affect women, but
then you're looking at a bunchof data from a strength training
program that had 45 men and twowomen, then you're not really
going to get the specific answeryou're looking for in that
study, because there wasn'tenough women to get an
understanding of how it wouldaffect women.
(12:43):
So the population data isextremely important, especially
when you're trying to understandsomething that you're wanting
to apply to you or to a group ofpeople that you're looking at.
So then this leads us to theresults section.
Under the results, it gives youa lot of graphs, a lot of
tables at least it should and alot of these can be very
(13:04):
confusing because there's a lotof italicized letters, like an
italicized P or an italicized F,which means several different
things.
But the results section shouldpresent the findings of the
study in the graph form, butalso in written form that you'll
be able to read and understand,and it should also include
(13:26):
negative results.
If they didn't find anything,or if they actually found
something opposite of what theythought they would find, that
should be included in theresults section as well, but
probably where all of it comesto life is in the discussion
section.
So it's in this section thatthe problem is being addressed,
but without repeating theintroduction.
(13:46):
So, hey, here's a reminder ofwhat we were trying to study.
And then what did the resultstell us?
And they have a discussionabout it.
They talk about whether it waswhat they thought it would be or
what they didn't think it wouldbe, and it's not written in
first person.
No scholarly article is writtenin first person, so it's not
(14:06):
like they're going to be saying.
I really thought that I wasgoing to find this to be true
and, much to my dismay, itwasn't.
It will instead be saidsomething like the hypothesis
that started this study was, andwhat we found was that the
hypothesis could be accepted.
That's actually not even howthey say it.
(14:26):
They'll say it some other kindof convoluted way with, like,
the null hypothesis beingaccepted or the null hypothesis
being rejected, which basicallyjust means that the null
hypothesis for every researcher.
We go into our researchbelieving that the null
hypothesis is going to be true,so basically that there is not
(14:47):
going to be any findings, and so, but we want there to be
findings.
We all enter into our studiesbelieving that we're going to
find something really cool.
So when we do find something,instead of just accepting the
secondary hypothesis, we rejectthe null hypothesis.
So we thought nothing was goingto happen.
(15:10):
But that's rejected, whichmeans we actually did find
something.
But you're going to find that inthe results section of the
study and the discussion willtypically talk about the strong
points of the study and thenthat will lead to the conclusion
section.
Now, sometimes this is acompletely different part.
Sometimes it's right in therewith the discussion, but most of
(15:31):
the time it is a separate part,and the final part of a paper
is the conclusion.
So it summarizes the real keypoints of the study, how the
methodology was done, what thefindings were.
It talks about what futureresearch should look at based on
what the results of this paperwas, and ultimately it's a very,
very, very, very, very, very,very gives the importance of why
(15:54):
this study was so important.
So it's a wrap-up section, it'sthe conclusion section.
So then, ultimately, how shouldyou go about reading a research
paper?
The first one is to determineyour goal.
What is it you're wanting tofind?
What is it that you're wantingto understand?
Maybe you're wanting tounderstand how running may
(16:19):
impact someone over a longperiod of time, and so you
should go and go try GoogleScholar, and maybe you type in
running programs, studies onrunning programs, and you begin
to see what all is out there,and then you can refine the
search results based on whatyou're wanting to know, and then
(16:42):
you can read the abstract andunderstand is this really going
to give me what I need?
Is this worth spending my timereally fleshing out, or should I
continue to look for somedifferent articles?
Another thing that you can do asI said before, I recommend that
the first couple of articlesthat you ever read, you should
read all of the way through togain an appreciation for the art
of research.
But then from there, the bestway to read a research article
(17:03):
is the following you read thetitle, you read the abstract,
you read the conclusion, youactually start with the
conclusion, then you go back tothe methodology section.
So conclusion, back tomethodology, to understand who
all they looked at and how theylooked at them.
You may skim the discussion andyou may skim the introduction,
(17:25):
but the real meat and potatoesof the high points of the
articles are in the methodsection and in the conclusion
section.
So once you get more attuned atreading articles and what to
look for, you can just readthose two areas and really get a
better idea of the truefindings, and then you can
always read further into thediscussion or the introduction
(17:47):
if you want to make sure thatyou have the right understanding
and the right grasp on thattopic topic.
The other thing that you likelywant to do when you find a
research article is not to justread one and then believe that
you know everything about thatsubject.
It is pertinent to understandthat there are millions,
(18:09):
hundreds of millions of researcharticles.
There are tens of thousands ofresearch articles on the
specific subject that you arelikely wanting to understand,
and so it's important to look atarticles and studies that have
looked at different parts ofwhat you're wanting to study and
maybe even have different views.
This is what is so important inresearch is the ability to have
(18:36):
a strong conviction, but alsoto learn about what the opposite
conviction is and have thatspace in the middle where you
can have critical thinking aboutwhy the two can both be true in
research.
And so I highly encourage youto not just read one article,
get a variety, get a depth ofarticles so that you can really
(18:59):
have a deeper and better andtruer appreciation for the art
of research.
In fact, you'll know a goodresearcher when they are not
100% certain about a subjectthat they've probably spent
their whole career researching.
Because the thing about researchis, the more that you do, the
less you realize you know, butthe more you want to know, and
(19:23):
so you start looking at it andthinking about how it interacts
and how it impacts all of thesedifferent areas of life, and it
can really help to not justcontinue the love of learning
about the subject but anappreciation for people who have
different points of views thanyou do.
I know for me, when I was goingthrough especially the first
three chapters of mydissertation, which is the
(19:45):
introduction, the literaturereview and the methodology, I
had to look at differing pointsof view of my subject matter and
appreciate both of those, butalso then come to my own
reasoning as to why I ended upbelieving what I believed, but I
had to cite absolutelyeverything.
(20:06):
And this is the other thingthat I believe is really
important to understand aboutresearchers, at least when they
go through their initialdissertation process.
You don't get to become aresearcher and a PhD without
showing a chair, like acommittee of other people,
including a dissertation chair,a methodologist, a content
(20:28):
expert all of these people youhave to show them you know how
to do your work and it is veryrigorously looked at and a very
iterative approach the whole waythrough and so constantly,
throughout it, you're gettingfeedback, you're getting
questioned, you're gettingpushback as to why you need, why
you can't just say that, youcan't just state something and
(20:50):
not have a citation based inscholarly research to back up
what you said for every singlething.
There is not one sentence that Ihave been able to write in my
dissertation that I haven't.
That has come from just my ownbrain.
All of it I've had to provebecause it is mentioned in not
(21:11):
just one but multiple othersources, and what that does is
it begins to strip away bias.
You can never fully strip awaybias, however, when you actually
have to go and find thescholarly research to back up
what you're trying to do or whatyou're wanting to understand,
(21:32):
you really do refine how youthink and you begin to realize
that some of the big, grandiosestatements that people make are
not as cut and dry or as clearas what they say.
So, overall, find somethingthat you want to learn more of,
or maybe you're wanting tocross-check something that
you've read in a headline.
Go and find that article, readit for yourself so that you can
(21:54):
actually see what the researchsays, because spoiler alert 99%
of the time and that is 100%number that I made up 99% of the
time what they say in theheadlines is a very gross
oversimplification orunderestimation of what an
actual research study actuallysaid.
So go and look for yourself andthen hopefully this will
(22:19):
facilitate a love of learningand a love of reading research
in your own life.
I hope that this was helpfulfor you.
Until next week, stay strong.
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