Instruction
Title of Article:
Author(s):
Title of Journal:
Publication Date:
THIS SUMMARY SHOULD BE COMPLETELY IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Only use quotations if it is
absolutely necessary to explain what the researchers did (i.e. quoting a survey question)
IT SHOULD BE AT LEAST 600 WORDS.
Introduction
For this section you should look at the abstract and introduction. Try to find the
hypothesis and the main points of the article and summarize them. It might be helpful to look at the
keywords listed at the bottom of the abstract. Here are some helpful questions to keep in mind as you
are writing your summary: Why was the experiment performed? What is/are main topic(s) of the
article? Why do the researchers want to explore this question/topic? Why is it important? How does it
relate to present research? Are the researchers trying to answer a question that no one else has looked
at before? Why is their research different?
Method
In this section, you want to explain what the researchers did in the experiment. Look at the
methods section and summarize, in your own words, how they carried out the experiment. Here are
some helpful questions to think about: Who were the participants? What did they measure? What did
they manipulate? Was there any equipment involved (computer, fMRI, eye-tracking) Did they use
surveys? Was there more than one experiment?
Results
In the results section you want to summarize what the researchers found. Look at the results
section and the discussion section. You do not need to include actual statistics. You may also find some
of the results listed in the abstract. The results should be the answers to some of the questions in
previous sections. Look for lines such as “significant results show that....” “these findings suggest that...”
“significant differences were found...” “in summary...” “this is the first study to find...” “these findings
reveal...” You want to find and summarize the most important results. Look for those key words and
then try to think about how those findings help to answer the research questions.
Discussion
Here, you want to conclude your summary. This section is an extension of the results and a
brief summary of the study as a whole. Why was the study important? What are the implications of this
experiment? Do these findings change any area of our society? Do they change how you think about a
topic? Here you can include some of your own opinions and interpretations of the article.