QUESTIONS TO GUIDE GROUP ANALYSIS OF PRIMARY ARTICLES
The point of this activity
is to help you gain confidence in unravelling the jargon and tight sentences
often used by authors of scientific articles and to gain practice in putting
the information into more relaxed, understandable language that tells the story
correctly but in a more "friendly" manner.
Each section gives a number of questions for you to answer. Find
your own voice in articulating your answers--if you have questions about the
information or the quality of the evidence, integrate those questions and concerns
into your answers.
All Groups
INTRODUCTION
The
point of the Introduction is to focus attention on the question that is addressed
by this research and to justify why
this can be considered an important question and a good way to ask it.
Typically the way evidence used in this justification is done through
citing appropriate literature.
1. List the statements made in the
introduction. Re state the statements
in language that is less jargony than what is used in the paper. Write it in a way that will be clear to
a friend who doesn't know anything about the topic.
2. Next, look carefully at each statement and
what kinds of evidence are used to support it. Be specific about the evidence—look in the back
at the references to see if they were to primary studies or popular books.
For instance, look
at the first sentence of the second paragraph.
- "Evidence from several studies
supports and inverse relationship between the intake of n-3 fatty acids
(FA's) in fish or fish oil and the rate of mortality from coronary artery
disease (4)."
That sentence could be
rewritten to make it easier to understand (and to show how well you do or
do not understand it) in the following way:
- "In order to explain why they wanted to carry out this
study, Hill and his colleagues referred to studies that had been published
earlier by other scientists. For instance, they briefly described findings
that had been published by Mozaffarian and Rimm about a study of fish intake
and human health. According to Hill at al., the study Mozaffarian and Rimm
showed that fewer people who ate a lot of fish or fish oils that contained
n-3 fatty acids died from heart attacks when compared to people who consumed
less fish oils. They didn't say anything about how long they had to be
eating fish oils to notice this difference though, and that would be interesting
to know.
I also wondered how many people they looked at in this study (by Mozaffarian
and Rimm). Maybe it was a small group of people or a group in whichhalf of
them lived on the coast and ate enormous amounts of fish. I'd like to know
how much difference there was in the amount of fish oil intake in order to
see a difference. Also I wondered how big the difference was in the number
who died of heart attacks and those who didn't--and what did the ohters die
of? Maybe the people who ate lots of fish oil died of something bad that
happened when you eat too much fish oil! I don't know. It's also worth saying
that Hill et al. didn't say what other ways the peoplewho ate lots of fish
oil differed from those who didn't. Maybe the difference in heart attacks
was due to something else in their life styles or their heredity. I'd like
to knowmore about how they did the study."
Go through the entire introduction that way, deconstructing
each sentence until you understand what they are saying and why, but also
sayingwhat youwonder about after you really think about it (and discuss it
with your team).
3. What hypothesis was investigated in this
study? Explain how it is related to the statements they make earlier
in the Introduction.
Group
1
METHODS
The point of this activity is to unravel the
jargon and tight sentences and little details (like what laboratories certain
things came from) of the Methods and
put them into more relaxed language that tells the story correctly but in a
more "friendly" manner.
1. What hypothesis was investigated
in this study?
2. How was the study set up? By this we mean, give an
overall description of the experimental design. Step back from their detailed
description and try state what you see as how the pieces fit together.
3. Explain why setting the
study up as they did is one good way to answer the question.
An example of what we mean
by #2 is to start off the description by saying
"The idea of how they set
this up is to feed some mice some food with...for up to 3 months and to
periodically...(do what?)"
Then play with the "why" for each of the
elements how they did this. Why did they use both MLT and Echinacea and why did they give
different groups different things?
Why did they look at them at these different times? Why did they measure
the kinds of things they measured?
You might not know all the
answers to questions like these, but ask the questions anyway and see if
you can figure out the reasoning. Keep reminding yourself what they
were trying to find out and decide if the way they were going about it
controlled for other possible factors that might affect the results.
Group
2
RESULTS
The point of this activity is to unravel the
jargon and tight sentences of the Results
section and put them into more relaxed language that tells the story correctly
but in a more "friendly" manner.
1. What
kinds of information were collected and analyzed? Remind us of the
question they were asking or hypothesis they were addressing and explain
how these data helped answer the question.
2. What were the results? Explain how well they do (or
do not) support the hypothesis. Tell us about actual numbers and comparisons. Give specific examples.
3. Do their descriptions of the results in the
text seem to be reflected in the graphs they refer to? How much of this is clear and what parts
of it raise questions for you? Make
a list of the specific questions you'd like answered by us or by the investigators.
Group 3
DISCUSSION
The point of this activity is to unravel
the jargon and tight sentences of the Discussion section
and put them into more relaxed language that tells the story correctly
but in a more "friendly" manner.
1. What did these investigators say
they could conclude from their results?
What you"ll notice as you go through this is
that they point out things they did and found, and they further discuss this
in terms of information other people have published.
2. Make a list of
What they say they about their own work in
this study.
After each statement, note what kinds of
information they drew on from the literature to either support, explain,
or contradict what they found.
3. What did they conclude overall?
4. What questions remain for them?
What further research
does this study suggest and why?