Mid-Month Mini Episode: How to Read a Scholarly Journal Article

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[0:00:49 Speaker 1] Hello, this is Kristen Win on this special mini episode of cancer uncovered in our many episodes, we present useful tools of the trade you can use as you venture into your career in health care, health science and beyond. This month we’re hosting Dr Faria phillips at UT AUstIN and Dell Medical School’s Department of Health social work. She is breaking down how to read a scholarly journal article. But first, what is a scholarly journal article and why would you ever read one great questions. The articles you find in a scholarly journal or pure reviewed publication is different than the articles you would find in time, National Geographic vogue and other popular magazines you might read online or find at the checkout counter at the grocery store a scholarly article. A peer reviewed article will feature formal research conducted on very specific topics or areas of study according to the University of texas at Austin’s library system. Peer review is a process that journals used to ensure the articles they publish represent the best research and scholarship currently available. When an article is submitted to a peer reviewed journal, the editor send it out to other scholars in the same field. The authors peers to get their opinion on the quality of the research its relevance to the field, it’s appropriateness for the journal and so on. Publications that don’t use peer review like time or Cosmo just rely on the judgment of the editors. Whether an article is up to snuff or not, that’s why you can’t count on them for solid scientific research. So as a high school or college student, as a cancer researcher or clinician, it’s important as you are advancing your research, becoming better at caring for patients or trying to write the best biology paper your professor or teacher has ever seen. It’s important to read and study the latest scholarly articles on topics related to your work and cancer, the best patient care, your midterm biology paper, researchers and clinicians alike at Dell Medical School form what are known as journal clubs. They all read a new scholarly journal article with new research or findings related to their work and they discuss it as a group ultimately to become better researchers and clinicians and to further their work in the field. We will have Faria break down the parts of a journal article and her input on how to read one without getting bogged down.

[0:03:30 Speaker 0] Hello, my name is Faria phillips. Although journal articles appear intimidating and time consuming, I hope to show the benefits we can gain from reading research to inform our clinical practice. Knowing a little about the structure of a research article might help you read critically and efficiently. A quick scan of the abstract and conclusion will not provide you with the level of information that will advance your practice. Familiarizing yourself with. The common format of articles will help you better extract important information. Most research articles are divided into six sections and each section contains specific types of information. The title the title of the article should tell you what the article will be about. It usually provides you with the essence of the study. It’s important to look at who wrote the article. This way the reader can get a better understanding of the perspective of the people conducting the research, check their credentials and affiliations. For example, an article written about preparing Children before surgery that did not involve pediatric experts may not have used developmentally appropriate preparation methods. The abstract. The abstract is the section that will provide a brief overview. The abstract summarizes the purpose of the study procedures, results and major conclusions. It makes sense to read the abstract first, as it can help you decide whether or not this research is relevant to the topic about which you’re interested in learning more. The introduction, the introduction of an article provides a brief description of the problem addressed by the study. It includes a statement of purpose, any hypotheses and a review of pertinent literature. Reading this section also gives you an idea of why the study is important and provide to a basic rationale as to why the research was conducted methods. The method section tells you about how the research was conducted and is usually broken down into sub sections, which will vary somewhat depending on the research. The method section describes how the researchers carried out their research. It describes the broad steady design, for example, whether it’s a randomized controlled trial or an online survey and it gives detailed descriptions of the relevant features of their specific study. For example, how many people were recruited to this study? How were they recruited? How was the questionnaire developed? What are the demographics of the population being studied, including their race, age and gender? The researchers must also describe how they measured the outcomes. For example, in the trial of an exercise program. Was exercise measured using patient self report or was a fitness tracker used to collect this data and how was the data analyzed? Overall, a good method section should provide the reader with all the necessary details to allow replication of the study. This section is often overlooked because it includes a lot of detailed technical information. However, this section is very important to professionals who may want to incorporate the intervention into their patient care. In order to make this judgment, you need to be able to make conclusions about the validity of the study. This means, to what extent are the conclusions of the research? Unbelievable and useful. The validity may also help you decide whether you can generalize the results of this study to the population with which you are working. The next section is the results. The results section tells the reader what was found in the study. The authors report data and determine any statistical significance tables and figures are often used to convey the information in an organized manner. This section is most easily understood after you have had a statistics and our research methods course, which is why the discussion section becomes most important to many readers. The discussion, the discussion section interprets the results of the study. For the reader, the authors review, interpret and evaluate the results in non technical language using no statistical markings. They discuss what the results mean, and how they relate to past research and theory as well as limitations of their study. This section may conclude with clinical implications and recommendations for future research and finally references. The reference section contains full citations for all the published research mentioned in the text of the article. If you try to read a new article from start to finish, you may get bogged down in the details. Instead, use your knowledge of the common format to find the main points look briefly at each section to identify the research question and reason for the study in the introduction. The hypotheses also in the introduction how the hypothesis was tested in the methods, the findings in the results and tables and figures and how the findings were interpreted in the discussion. Now that you know how to read research articles effectively, you can weave new research into your clinical practice which is essential in providing quality health care.

[0:10:03 Speaker 1] Thank you dr phillips for taking time out of your day to break this down for us. And another thank you to the U. T. Austin library system. I would suggest the next time you are reading a scholarly article or conducting research on a topic via journals in the library. That you refer back to this podcast episode and take a listen with your journal article in hand to help you really dig in and see the sections of the articles that dr phillips was talking about. Now get out there and read the latest research with confidence befriend a librarian, Start a journal club, become the leading expert in your class, in your family and above all else. Stay curious if you have questions for dr phillips, if you have ideas for future, many episodes or more cancer specific questions that we can uncover, email us at live strong cancer institutes at Dell med dot utexas dot e d u. You can find out more about the livestrong cancer institutes at Dell med dot utexas dot e d u. You can find out more about our cancer clinic at ut health austin 0.0.0.0.0.0 r G. You can also follow our chair, dr Gail Eckhart on twitter at S Gail Eckhart. Eckhart is spelled E c k h a r d t. This is Kristen Win, saying farewell for now for cancer uncovered. Thank you for listening and learning with us