About

Journal articles are peer-reviewed publications that help scholars communicate ideas, theories, empirical analyses, and conclusions.

The ability to critically read journal articles is a skill that is developed with practice. This skill is especially useful when you transfer to a 4-year college or university.

If you are contemplating attending graduate school to earn a Masters, professional, or Doctoral degree, then analyzing journal articles is an essential skill.

Analyzing a journal article is related to reading. Reading is a skill that is developed with practice and is important for your future academic, professional, and personal endeavors.

• Academically, your reading load will increase with each semester you are in higher education. Building that skill now will serve you well into the future.
• Professionally, you will have contracts, employee handbooks, technical manuals, financial reports, and other documents to read.
• Personally, your son, daughter, nephew, or niece will need you to teach them to read.

Instructions

Step 1: Download PDF of the article

• POSC 121 – Hall, Andrew B., and Daniel M. Thompson. 2018. “Who Punishes Extremist Nominees? Candidate Ideology and Turning Out the Base in US Elections.” The American Political Science Review 112 (3): 509–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055418000023. (Links to an external site.)

Step 2: Analyze the Article (2pages)

• Identify the 12 parts of the article, as described in the Anatomy of a Journal Article and elaborated upon in the Details of Analyzing Journal Articles, and you can also review the Walkthrough.
• Optional:Schedule a tutoring appointment with the Writing Center or meet with a NetTutor (if available) if you want a 3rd party to help you think through this assignment
• Optional: Upload a picture of you Writing Center Tutoring slip or a screenshot of your NetTutor interaction as evidence

Step 3: Demonstrate identification of parts

• Paper: hand write on the margins or the back of the page
• Electronic: electronically highlight the text and/or comment in margins of the page

Step 4: Write Out the Research Design

• Of the 12 parts, only one of them needs to be written out: Research Design. The Research Design is how the author compares the effect of the explanatory variable (X) on the outcome variable (O) in a group (G) or set of groups.
• If needed, return to the Details of Analyzing Journal Articles page and the Walkthrough Presentation for clarification on the concept.
• For an in-depth discussion on research design, you can read Chapter 6 – Elements of Research Design in Introduction to Political Science Research Methods (Links to an external site.).
• Step 5: Upload your file upload submission

• Paper: If you hand wrote your analysis on a printed paper, please use CamScanner app (Links to an external site.), use “Batch” function to take pictures of each page and create a single PDF. After a single PDF is created, please upload the file.
• Electronic Option 1: If you used Adobe PDF software to annotate, then you can upload the annotated file
• Electronic Option 2: You can try annotating in the Canvas Student App.
  • How do I submit a PDF assignment with annotations in the Student app on my iOS device? (Links to an external site.)
  • How do I submit a PDF assignment with annotations in the Student app on my Android device? (Links to an external site.)

Support

Go to How do I view annotation feedback comments from my instructor directly in my assignment submission? (Links to an external site.) to learn how I directly include feedback on the file you upload, compared to the Assignment Comments or Rubric Results.

Rubric