Introduction: Brief Overall Description of the Article
Introduce the author and title of the article. (Article titles are set with quotation marks.
What is the subject matter of the articles? What is their overall purpose (informative? persuasive?) and who is their intended audience? Can you identify the thesis/research question?
Indicate the article’s thesis idea, if there is one. This thesis should be contained within your introduction. Be sure to also give the title of the article, the author(s), and where & when it was originally published.
What is the basic structure and format of the sources?
Characterize the research and analytic methods used by your author. Are the methods quantitative or qualitative? Describe the approach as best you can, even if you are not familiar with all the technical details.
What kinds of key questions and critical assumptions are evident in the article?
Is the article interdisciplinary in its orientation? If so, to what degree? How can you tell?
What kind of data does the author examine — primary documents, statistical information, experimental results, anecdotal evidence, interviews of authors, literary or historical texts, etc.? Are the data subjective, objective, or a mix of the two?
What sort of things counts as “evidence” in this article? How strong and compelling is this evidence? Which article uses evidence/data more effectively; or, do they simply use different kinds of evidence?
How well documented are the data? Does the author provide a way for you to evaluate the accuracy and quality of the evidence used?
Credibility
