a. Your summary should contain each one of these main sections and the subsequent
questions should be answered within each section
i. What you write is not limited to the questions asked in each section
ii. Your summary should not be a report where you just answer the questions
I ask. Instead, the questions should serve as a guide for what should be
included as you discuss and summarize your primary research article.
b. Abstract
i. Overall short summary of your report
c. Introduction
i. What questions were the investigators asking?
ii. Why are they asking these questions?
iii. What is/are the background of this question(s)?
iv. What is the background of this question?
1. This means you need to do some background research
v. What is their hypothesis?
vi. How did they arrive at their hypothesis statement?
d. Methods
i. How did they test their hypothesis?
ii. Explain their experimental design (include important materials and
methods)
iii. Discuss and describe the techniques they utilized
iv. Identify their independent, dependent and control variables
e. Results
i. Report, describe and discuss their results
ii. Include graphs, tables and charts that were in the paper with the proper
citations
f. Discussion
i. From your vantage point, how did their experiment design make sense to
possibly test their hypothesis
ii. Why did they test their hypothesis using the methods they used?
iii. According to the investigators what were the implications of their results?
iv. What issues or shortcomings were in their experiment, if any?
v. Was their hypothesis supported or rejected?
vi. Whats next according to the researchers or according to you?
g. Conclusion
i. What did the researchers conclude about their research?
ii. What are some future implications of the research?
Keep in mind as you are reading and for consideration to be added to your summary:
a. What background information was available to the researchers at the time?
b. Was their technique novel?
i. If so, what has become of it today?
