If you read through all my articles on how to read research articles, you are now an expert!  Here is a summary of the main questions to ask when reading research articles about treatment options.  If most of the answers are “no” you’re urged to proceed with caution. Was the article published in a peer-reviewed journal?…

The references section outlines previous journal articles that form the authors theories about what he or she is studying.  As you look at the references, remember to consider the age of these articles. If the majority of the previous studies used here were before 1997, it is likely that the author’s theories about the brain…

Not all studies will include this section.  Usually the acknowledgements section includes information acknowledging people who helped with the statistical analysis, supervising the assessment of the participants, and/or places where the study took place.  Here it is important to search these individuals or companies on the internet to see how they are related to the…

Are the Results What You’re Hoping For? In the Results section of a research article, you want to read to see how the research participants improved and if that improvement was significant. Here it’s important to see if the results were significant in the areas where you want to see improvements in your child.  For…

The methods section of a research article is where the researcher tells about the study participants, the treatment they received, how they measured the results, and what statistical methods were used to measure the results. There are a number of things to consider here. How Do The Children in the Study Compare to Your Child? First, it’s…

The Introduction section of a journal article is the background information the author uses to tell the reader about all the pertinent previous research on the topic being studied, his or her theories about the topic, and why he or she decided to study this topic again. Consider the Source In the introduction, look to…

Skip right over the abstract…Don’t stop here!  Because this is a brief summary of the study, it usually contains lots of psycho-babble and statistical words that may or may not mean what you think they mean!  Even some of the best trained research-analysts can be fooled by the information in the abstract. If you need…

Here you are looking to see if the research article was published in a peer-reviewed journal or by a reputable publisher of books about the subject.  If the article is an unpublished dissertation or an unpublished master’s thesis or an unpublished meta-analysis beware.  To tell if the article actually appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, look for…