Raff's "How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists"

Jennifer Raff is a geneticist, professor, and enthusiastic blogger. She created a helpful guide for how non-scientists (like our students) can best approach and make sense of research articles.

The original article is very detailed and explains how to make sense of experts. Personally, I appreciate that this guide is born out of trying to debate non-scientists about research. She wants everyone to benefit from science and make informed decisions based on research. I think that is great.

I think this would be an excellent way to introduce your undergraduates to research articles in the classroom.

I especially appreciated this summary of her steps (see below). This could be turned into a worksheet with ease. Note: I still think your students should chew on the full article before they are ready to answer these eleven questions.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2016/05/09/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper-a-guide-for-non-scientists/#author

If you are looking for a more psychology-specific guide for reading the research, I also love this perennially popular piece by Jordan and Zanna. It may be entitled "How to read an article in social psychology," but it is an excellent guide to reading research in any psychology discipline. I teach two research-reading heavy psychology electives (Positive and Motivation and Emotion). I assign this article, and a quiz about this article, during the first week of both classes.

Does anyone else have any other suggestions for guides to reading research? Lemme know, and I'll add them to this post.