Are Canadian women who are currently in a committed relationship Likely to become more vulnerable to accept abuse from their partners?
Research Article Analysis
I. Select a contemporary Canadian research article from a refereed journal
In this assignment, you work independently. Your task is to critique an argument made by a researcher
or a team of researchers who have written a research article on a contemporary Canadian field-related
issue. The article must be one other than the ones that you and your group worked on in your Literature
Review. The issue addressed by the researcher(s) needs to fall within the original research question that
you posed for your Literature Review. As a result, you will continue the process of building focused
knowledge and thinking critically about arguments on an issue of interest in the field. You may even find
it useful to cite evidence from one or more articles used in your Literature Review to support your
critique of the research article for this assignment, though this is not required.
II. Plan your analysis
Your analysis of the argument advanced in the research article that you have selected needs to be
critical. In planning your analysis, make use of as many relevant skills as you like from our lessons (and
from Browne and Keeley’s Asking the Right Questions, if you like). Consider, for instance, any significant
ambiguity in the argument’s language (its key terms), its assumptions, any fallacies it contains, its use of
various sorts of evidence, any faults in its treatment of causes, its use of statistics, any place(s) where
significant information is omitted, anywhere that alternative conclusions are overlooked, and other
possible tactics for questioning, challenging, and critically appraising the argument. Ultimately, ask
yourself this: “On what basis could this argument be rejected?” or “Even if I were to accept this
argument, how could it be refined and improved?”
Organize your main points into a thesis statement that addresses the article’s argument. Your thesis
needs to express your acceptance or rejection of the article’s argument on the basis of a set of critical
points that you intend to make about it. Summarizing the article’s essential argument briefly within your
introductory paragraph will allow you to set up the analysis of it that follows. Your summary should
identify the argument’s issue, conclusion and reasons, but not the details of its evidence and style since
these take us beyond summarizing. The body of your analysis should be devoted to making critical
observations and posing searching questions that open up the argument’s flaws, any misgivings about
it that you may have, and relevant perspectives that the researcher(s) may have overlooked. However,
do not use the article’s argument as a springboard to discuss the issue in detail or to make your own
argument on the issue. Your aim is to critique the argument, not to write an argument of your own. In
a brief concluding paragraph, suggest new directions that you believe future research on this issue
would benefit from pursuing.
III. Compose your analysis
Your analysis should be a minimum of 500 words, though it may well be longer. Those that have scored
well in the past have been significantly longer, often 750 words at least. Quality matters more than
quantity, but for an assignment like this to be successful, it needs to be thoroughly critical, and that
cannot easily be done in a short span. As the assessment criteria for this assignment show, when grading
it, emphasis will fall on both its analytical strength and its effectiveness as a piece of writing. The style
you use when analyzing an argument is actually a part of the analysis itself: in critiques of this kind,
Research Article Analysis (20%) F2019
effective style tends to be efficient, direct, precise, and evidence-oriented. Wherever appropriate, use
the terms that researchers use when discussing their work, and that we have reinforced in class.
Proofreading, editing, and documentation skills are also critical parts of the quality of an analysis, so give
them attention too. Making good use of the models provided will also support your efforts to perform a
rigorous analysis and to learn from the experience.
IV. Submit your analysis
Submit both a hard copy of your Research Article Analysis to me on the due date and also a soft copy to
the designated drop box on e-centennial. To assess your analysis, I need first to read the research article
that you have selected, so be sure to do one of the following:
i. submit it to me in hard copy, or
ii. upload/post a soft copy of it (many exist in pdf format) with your assignment to the
dropbox, or
iii. integrate into your assignment a working link to it—but make sure the link works.
Unless I receive a hard copy of the research article that you have analyzed, or at least convenient
access to it through a working link or a soft copy of the article in the designated dropbox, I will not
read and grade your Research Article Analysis.
