Locate a recent news article (within the past 6 months) that reports on a quantitative research finding relevant to human services. This should be sourced from conventional, respectable news media. Using the template below as a guide for your assignment headings, respond to all of the items using proper grammar and spelling.
Part 1:
News report title: Title of the news report.
News report source: Note whether this was a print newspaper, tabloid paper, online report, etc.
Summary of the news article: Briefly discuss what the topic of the news article was and what they reported the research findings to be. Note who you think the target audience for this report was, and a summary of the information reported about the methodology, and/or strengths or limitations of the research (if there was none, you should state this). Note what the purpose for reporting this research seemed to be (why report on this topic?). Does the presentation of the article seem like “click bait” or a more serious report?
This section should be about ¾ of a page long.
Part 2:
Original article title: Title of the research article.
Summary and critique of the research article: Note the topic area of the research, the theoretical framework underpinning the research (or note if none was explicit), what were the key questions or hypotheses that the researchers set out to investigate, who were the subjects in the research, what methodology was used to gather the data (you are not reviewing the method of data analysis in this assignment), and what data were collected. Also note what the primary results of the research were and whether they supported the researchers’ hypotheses.
This section should be about 1 to 1 ¼ pages long.
Part 3:
Compare the news report to the original research article: Discuss whether the news report presented the original article in an accurate way. Was it presented in a fair way that was generally a summary of the article, or did you pick up on distortion (such as focusing on one element of the results that undermined the understanding of the overall meaningfulness of the research results)? Was the information presented with an understanding of the strengths or limitations of the study, or was it presented in a simplistic way (e.g. presenting tentative results as conclusive, or adding unwarranted value judgments). Was there over-generalization of the results (a subsample of the population was the research focus, divorced parents for instance, but the results were generalized to all parents)? Did any distortions you noted give the impression of bias or prejudice (political, social identity feature, etc.)? Did your impression of the purpose for reporting the original research fit with your sense of any bias you did or didn’t note? What would have made the news reporting better?
This section should be about 1 to 1 ¼ pages long.
What did you learn from this exercise? Did this comparison change how you will read news articles on research in the future? What did you need to consider in doing this critique that you haven’t considered when reading these types of news reports in the past? Do you think the degree of similarities and differences between the content in the news report and original article you chose are typical, better, or worse than in typical news reporting?