The Research Paper: Module 7

Each student should select another student's paper to review.  

Respond to the classmate whose paper you have chosen by posting your name, and identifying yourself as the reviewer for that paper.  

Read the selected paper and complete a review.  

Highline Writing Center - Keys to Peer Reviewing 

The peer review should be four paragraphs in length, and address the four areas described below.  Be positive, be kind, but offer helpful critique.  

The purpose of the critique is threefold:

1. The exercise will give you practice in reading a paper analytically, looking for both positive and negative points.
2. It will provide you with the opportunity to learn in some detail about an area in military psychology.  
3. It will provide the author of the paper with constructive feedback so that he or she can learn from your effort.

The critique should include a paragraph for each of the the following sections:

Background:     Did the paper provide a rationale or background on the topic?  Is there a sufficient review of the literature or are only a few articles cited?  Are scholarly articles used or simply a collection of websites?  After reading the paper, do you understand the author’s thesis? 

Current Use:     Does the paper examine current research in the field to explore the topic?  Is the breadth of the literature review sufficient to explain how this issue is currently being addressed?

Evaluation and Summary:     Does the paper objectively evaluate the issue based on a review of the literature?   Are the pros and cons of the area presented?   Did you find the arguments to be sufficiently persuasive?

Mechanical Issues:     How well is the paper written?  Are there typographical errors, misspellings, instances of poor sentence structure, or poor paragraph structure?  Is the paper wordy or concise and to the point?  Do paragraphs logically flow together or does the paper jump from topic to topic?  Are all statements supported by references? Are all references properly cited?