“THE FORMULA FOR REVIEWING PAPERS” Developed by Robert Hurley, PhD. Professor Emeritus, Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University
INTRODUCTION
- What is the issue addressed in the paper?
- Why is the issue worth addressing?
- What is in the paper (i.e. a preview of what is to come)?
PROBLEM STATEMENT
- What is the question to be answered?
- Is it important? Why and to whom?
- What will this study contribute to the current body of knowledge?
BACKGROUND/PREVIOUS LITERATURE
- What do we already know already about the question?
- What are the gaps in prior literature?
- What are some of the limitations of previous work done in this area?
THEORETICAL/CONCEPTUAL MODEL
- What kind of conceptual model is being used to examine this issue (what is the “argument”)?
- Is this model anchored in a broader theoretical framework?
- Why is this model appropriate and/or superior to others that might be used?
- What features/facets/relationships of the model (theory) apply to this issue?
- What specifically does the adopted model predict or suggest about the question at hand?
- Given the question of interest, the literature review, and the conceptual model, what hypotheses are going to be tested?
METHODS AND DATA
- How are the hypotheses being tested in the study?
- What is the study population and is a subset (sample) or the universe?
- What features or units are examined and do these features have variability?
- How are the units measured?
- Where do values of the measures (i.e. data) come from?
- How were the data gathered?
- How were variables created from the data?
- Has the conceptual model been expressed in terms of your variables?
- How were data analyzed to test explicitly the proposed hypotheses?
FINDINGS OR RESULTS
- What do the data indicate?
- Are the data presented clearly and logically?
- What are the measures of central tendency and variability in the data?
- Is the data presentation consistent with the questions examined in the study?
- What are the results of the analyzes undertaken to conduct tests of the hypotheses?
- Is the reader able to draw his/her own conclusions based on presentation of results?
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
- Are the findings specially related back to the hypotheses?
- What are the results of the individual hypothesis tests?
- Are the author’s interpretations of results plausible?
- Are the findings summarized and linked to the earlier literature to indicate how the body of knowledge has been advanced?
- What are the principal limitations of the findings and the study as a whole?
- How might some of the limitations be overcome?
- What are policy and/or management implications of findings?
- Do the findings indicate that the theoretical or conceptual model was or was not appropriate?
- What should be examined next to continue to advance the body of knowledge in this area?
CONCLUSION
- Briefly, what has been done and learned in this study.