What are Scholarly Journal Articles?: Recognizing Different Types of Scholarly Journal Articles
Professors may require you to use a specific type of scholarly journal article for an assignment. They also may require you to avoid using some types of scholarly journal articles. So how do you figure out what kind you have?
FIRST QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF:
Is the scholarly journal article about the author's own research or research done by others?
THE ANSWER WILL BE:
In the articles' abstract and/or introduction. Authors writing about their own research will say things like "We conducted a study . . ." or "The experiment was designed . . ."
- THE DIFFERENT TYPES: DEFINITIONS AND EXAMPLES -
THE AUTHORS DID THE RESEARCH: QUANTITATIVE OR EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
- QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH -
Quantitative research looks at factors that can actually be measured in some way, in other words, quantified. It produces numerical results that can be analyzed statistically.
Quantitative research commonly involves experimentation, surveys, or questionnaires in the context of a large, randomly selected group.
- EMPIRICAL RESEARCH -
The term empirical research is often used as a synonym for quantitative research, but strictly speaking, empirical research is simply any form of research based upon direct observation. It might also be quantitative, but it might not.
PLEASE NOTE: Some professors use these two terms interchangeably. When this occurs, they are usually referring to articles that fit the quantitative description above.
HINT: Don't use the words "quantitative" or "empirical" in your keyword searches. They usually do not appear in article titles, abstracts, or subject words. Instead, check the articles you find to see if some sort of numerical measuring and/or statistical analysis is present.
Examples:
THE AUTHORS DID THE RESEARCH: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
- QUALITATIVE RESEARCH -
Qualitative research typically uses interviews, open-ended questions, participant observations, etc., to identify patterns, themes, and features. These factors cannot easily be reduced to numbers. Qualitative research is common in the social sciences. Focus group studies and case studies are two common types of qualitative research.
HINT: Don't use the word "qualitative" in your keyword searches. It will not appear in article titles, abstracts, or subject words. Instead, try these keyword phrases, "focus group" or "case study".
Examples:
THE AUTHORS USED CONTENT CREATED BY OTHER SCHOLARS: LITERATURE REVIEWS
- LITERATURE REVIEW -
A literature review, also known as a review article, is a scholarly journal article whose sole purpose is to provide an overview of previous important research on a particular topic. Researchers often conduct a literature review before going on to create an experiment or study.
HINT: You can use the phrase "literature review" in your keyword searches since it usually appears in a title.
Example:
THE AUTHORS USED CONTENT CREATED BY OTHER SCHOLARS: META-ANALYSES
- META-ANALYSIS -
A meta-analysis takes the results of several existing quantitative/empirical studies and analyzes them in a new way. Meta-analysis looks for previously unnoticed patterns or trends among existing study results, or seeks to pull out new data from them. They also may be combined with a literature review or a systematic review.
HINT: You can use the word "meta-analysis" in your keyword searches since it usually appears in a title.
Examples:
AUTHORS USED CONTENT CREATED BY OTHER SCHOLARS: SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS
- SYSTEMATIC REVIEW -
A systematic review is similar to a literature review, but has greater depth. A systematic review usually focuses on a single, well-defined research question and seeks to comprehensively gather all existing studies that address this research question. May be combined with a meta-analysis (see example above).
HINT: You can use the phrase "systematic review" in your keyword searches since it usually appears in a title.
Example:
