Description
Assignment: Reaction Papers
Like the mini review you conducted week 1, reaction papers are design to facilitate your engagement with the primary literature. However, reaction papers ask you to think critically about the material you are reading, rather than simply summarize it. You will complete three reaction papers during the course. I strongly encourage you to use papers related to your final paper topic.
Your task:
Locate a peer-reviewed journal article focusing on an environmental social science topic. Ensure your paper is a study where primary data collection occurred, not a review or an opinion piece. Consult the list of journals in the mini review assignment for ideas on where to look for articles, or to compare if you are unsure about the source of a certain manuscript.
Read the article using the methods we discussed in class (YouTube video). Make sure you thoroughly understand the purpose, the methods, results, and meaning of the results. Its ok if the statistics are more advanced than your current level. However, I encourage you to select papers that are within your scope of understanding.
For your paper provide a 2-3 page (double spaced, 12pt Calibri or Times font, 1 in margin) summary and analysis of the work.
A summary of the article including:
Article title and where and when it was published
Study purpose
Research questions or hypotheses
Method of data collection and the human population of interest
Main findings from the results
Implications of the findings for theory or practice
- Analysis of the work by answering the following questions
What philosophical orientation are the authors following? This wont be explicitly stated in the study. Based on what you learned, what is your assessment and why? – See the table in the Moon and Blackman (2014) paper for help.
How do the results of this study challenge what you already know about this topic; or do you disagree with the veracity of the findings, and why?
Does this study spawn any new questions you could research, if so what are they; or, what could the authors have done differently to make the study better and why?