How to Write a Reflection Article in Psychology
Your professor’s given you an article and asked you to write a summary and reflection (critical analysis). You can barely understand the article! How are you supposed to critically analyze it?! If this is your problem, this article is for you. The article is divided into three sections: how to understand the paper, briefly summarize the paper, and write your own reflection piece.
How to Read and Understand a Scientific Paper
This is the order I suggest reading in:
1. The Introduction section. This will (clearly) introduce you to the topic. Most importantly, it will define all of the confusing terms that will be stated throughout the paper. There is a lot of jargon to get through, so this section is invaluable because 1) the introduction defines the jargon, and 2) it gives you a review of the previous research that has been done on the topic, which will deepen your understanding of the issue.
2. The Abstract section. This will give you a paragraph summary of every section, with about 1-2 sentences from each section of the paper. It’s great for understanding the most important sections of the paper and as inspiration for your brief summary!
3. The Discussion section. This will summarize the important parts of the Results section (perfect for the summary section of your paper), tell you the limitations of the study (this will become very important in your reflection) and provide directions for future research (also important for your reflection).
I remember the first APA article I ever read. I had a few days before I had to present it to the class. It was a Cognitive Psychology article about robotics and the future of Artificial Intelligence. I cried. To date, it was the hardest article I’ve ever read because I had to sit there and Google the definition of every other word. But once I did, I understood it so well that when I gave a public presentation on it, my classmates complimented me on how confident and knowledgeable I was. The second Psychology article I read? It wasn’t as bad. The third was even easier. Now I can speed read a Psychology paper in three minutes and write an articulate reflection.
Google is your friend. This is especially the case if English is not your first language. There are no shortcuts in this area!
I’m going to give you an example of the first paragraph of a real research paper called “Correlates of Depression in First-Year College Students” (Villatte, Marcotte, & Potvin, 2017)*
To learn about how to quickly cite papers using Google Scholar, click here.
“Multiple studies have confirmed a marked increase over the past few years in the number of postsecondary students suffering from mental health problems (Daddona, 2011; Fier & Brzezinski, 2010; MacKean, 2011). Both teachers and school psychologists are highly concerned about this increase: not only does it reveal the need for more resources; it also calls for a change in orientation with regard to the kinds of services to offer their clientele. There needs to be a move from a preventative and developmental approach toward a more clinical or crisis intervention approach (Kitzrow, 2003)”.
Let’s now grab the first definition of these words that Google gives us:
Postsecondary: “Any education beyond high school”.
Resources: “A stock or supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively”. Let’s simplify this further with our own definition: “Anything you need, whether it be money or therapists, to help the problem”
Orientation: The definition is not helpful, but synonyms include “position, location”.
Preventative approach (this might sound obvious, but it helps to solidify the definition): “Anything a teacher implements to prevent undesirable behaviors. Instead of waiting for problem behaviors to occur, proactive techniques implemented successfully decrease the likelihood of problem behaviors and promote positive behavioral choices in the classroom”. Since this is a classroom example, we can create our own definition: A preventative approach means not waiting for depression to occur, but trying to prevent it from happening in the first place.
Developmental approach: “Series of crises through which the individual grows and evolves”. Our own definition: “An approach where you consider the stages of life that a person is in (childhood, adulthood, middle adulthood, etc.). The article said we need to “move away” from this. That means that perhaps we are viewing depression as normal for that age group.
Clinical approach: “This term refers to the style or technique the treating professional applies to the disorder, problem, case, family, or individual”. Our own definition: “Having a professional treat the depression”.
Crisis intervention define*: “Refers to the methods used to offer immediate, short-term help to individuals who experience an event that produces emotional, mental, physical, and behavioral distress or problems”. Our own definition: Immediate, short-term help for depression.
*I sometimes change the wording when I Google the term. Sometimes one way of wording it (“crisis intervention approach” will produce a lengthy and confusing definition, but another way of wording it (“crisis intervention define”) gives me a very clear answer.
Is this a long and tedious process? Yes. But now I can write an extremely simplified “translation” of what I just read. Here it is:
“Multiple studies show there has been an increase in the past few years in the number of college students with mental health issues. This is concerning because it not only shows us that we may need more resources (such as more therapists or money for services), but we also need to change our position in the kinds of services we offer. We need to move from an approach that tries to prevent depression from happening and a developmental approach that normalizes depression. Instead, we need to use a clinical approach where we focus on treating depression and a crisis intervention approach where we focus on immediate short-term help for people suffering from depression.”
There you have it: if you want to understand a research paper, Google every word you don’t know and then plug it into the paper to get a simple understanding of the topic that doesn’t make you cry.
How to Write a Summary
Most professors ask for a brief (half a page or so) summary of the article before diving into the reflection. This means that most of the time, you won’t have to read the Methods and Results section! Everything you have to know about Methods will likely be in the Abstract and everything you have to know about Results will likely be in the Abstract section and Discussion section. There are exceptions! If your professor has provided a rubric that asks you to summarize all of the portions of the paper, that is different from a typical reflection assignment and you will need to read those sections. The good news is that professors who do this almost always provide a rubric that details everything from those sections that you need to write about – follow that rubric!
Now that you’ve read the section on how to understand the paper, summarizing it should be easier. One of the issues students often have is spending too much time discussing one topic and not enough time discussing another. They might even trail off into a tangent that has little to do with the paper. Remember that the Abstract is your inspiration. When you read it (and you should read it right after the Introduction), you may notice that 1-2 sentences of each section are summarized in the Abstract. This might be too little for a summary portion of a reflection paper, so try to aim for 3-4 sentences from the introduction and 3-4 sentences from the discussion.
Here is an example of a few sentences you may wish to include in your summary:
“The study of __ is interesting to researchers/important to study because it has implications for __, __, and __”. Previous research on the topic has found that __. This study surveyed __ number of subjects (specify if they were students, teachers, parents, etc.) to understand __. Results found that __. The study provides evidence towards the __ hypothesis/body of research that has found that __.
How to Write a Reflection
For the rest of this article, I will be focusing on a fictional example of a study on the effects of depression on college GPA and the intention of attending graduate school.
Fictional Summary example:
“The study of depression in college students is relevant because school performance has implications for future salary and chances of acceptance into higher education programs. Previous research on the topic has found that college students are vulnerable to developing depression due to high levels of stress and anxiety, as well as the fact that many mental health illnesses have their onset in young adulthood. This study surveyed 100 undergraduate college students to understand whether depression results in a lowered GPA and fewer ambitions to attend graduate school. Results indicated that college students with depression had a significantly lower GPA compared to college students without any mental illnesses and they were less likely to plan to attend graduate school. The study provides evidence toward the body of research that has found that schoolwork tends to suffer when people have depression.”
Our job now is to give our impressions of the article, poke holes in their argument (if applicable), discuss the limitations of the study, and suggest future research avenues. This is similar to the Discussion section of an APA paper.
A great way to start is by considering whether the experiment has any confounds.
A confound (also called a confounding variable) is the true cause of the relationship between whatever you are studying.
Let’s say you work for Ben & Jerry’s. You see that Ben & Jerry’s advertises more in the summer. You also see that when they advertise more in the summer, sales go up. You (falsely!) conclude that the more Ben & Jerry’s advertises, the more sales go up, and you launch an advertising campaign in the dead of winter. Nobody buys the ice cream. Where did you go wrong?
You saw that when advertising is increased, sales go up. But the reason why those previous campaigns worked is that they were carried out in the summer. You simply can’t expect to have those same strong results in the dead of winter. Summer is the confounding variable in this example. Summer is the true cause of the relationship between advertising costs and ice cream sales.
Let’s now see if we can find a confound in this fictional study, where depressed students had lower GPA’s and were less likely to plan on going to graduate school.
There’s a lot of research out there that shows that depression is more common in low-income students. There is also a lot of research that shows that a low-income background is associated with lower school performance and fewer chances of attending graduate school.
So is it possible that the depressed students were more likely to come from a low-income background and that is the TRUE reason why they had a lower GPA and a smaller chance of planning to attend graduate school? Income might be a confounding variable.
We could now write the following in our reflection paper:
One limitation of this study is that depression tends to be greater among low-income populations (cite a study that supports this) and low-income populations attend graduate school at far lower rates and have lower school performance (cite another study that supports this). Perhaps low income is the true cause of these outcomes and is a confounding variable in this study.
Now let’s see if we can get even more deeply into this. It will require brainstorming which could take a while at first but if you keep at it, it will become second nature.
What college was this anyway? If it’s Harvard, maybe there aren’t a whole lot of low-income students and so income would NOT be a confounding variable. If it’s a community college in a low-income neighborhood, maybe most people are low-income and it would once again NOT be a confounding variable.
Did the study mention the median household income for the college they conducted a survey in? If not, there you have another limitation. You can also write about how future studies may combat this issue that you have identified. You can write this up as follows:
The authors of this paper did not include information on the income of the families of the college students at that particular college. Colleges vary in how many of their students come from low-income backgrounds. Analyzing this information might make it clearer whether income is a potential confound. Future research is needed that accounts for the effect that depression has on GPA and graduate school plans, once income is taken into consideration and analyzed as well.
What else did the authors not do? Well, they mentioned “college students with depression”. They did not measure the severity of the depression. Perhaps whether GPA and graduate school intentions are affected by depression depends on how severe the person’s depression is. We could now write:
The severity of depression was not measured in this sample. Perhaps whether GPA and graduate school intentions differ is based on how severe the person’s depression is.
We should sum up with our overall thoughts on the study:
Understanding how depression could influence GPA and graduate school intentions is an important area of study. However, this study does not consider the effect that income may have or measure the severity of depression. A study that tackles an issue as complex as this should account for these factors.
Now we have a sizable summary AND reflection. Here is the final product:
The study of depression in college students is relevant because school performance has implications for future salary and chances of acceptance into higher education programs. Previous research on the topic has found that college students are vulnerable to developing depression due to high levels of stress and anxiety, as well as the fact that many mental health illnesses have their onset in young adulthood. This study surveyed 100 undergraduate college students to understand whether depression results in a lowered GPA and fewer ambitions to attend graduate school. Results indicated that college students with depression had a significantly lower GPA compared to college students without any mental illnesses and they were less likely to plan to attend graduate school. The study provides evidence supporting the body of research that has found that schoolwork tends to suffer when people have depression.
One limitation of this study is that depression tends to be greater among low-income populations (cite a study that supports this) and low-income populations attend graduate school at far lower rates and have lower school performance (cite another study that supports this). Perhaps low income is the true cause of these outcomes and is a confounding variable in this study. The authors of this paper did not include information on the income of the families of college students at that particular college. Colleges vary in how many of their students come from low-income backgrounds. Analyzing this information might make it clearer whether income is a potential confound. Future research is needed that accounts for the effect that depression has on GPA and graduate school plans, once income is taken into consideration and analyzed as well. The severity of depression was also not measured in this sample. Perhaps whether GPA and graduate school intentions differ is based on how severe the person’s depression is. Understanding how depression could influence GPA and graduate school intentions is an important area of study. However, this study does not consider the effect that income may have or measure the severity of depression. A study that tackles an issue as complex as this should account for these factors.
There you have it! This is a very short summary and article reflection – your professor might ask for a full page or more. However, it gives you a sense of where to begin and how to think about research. Once you have completed the paper, click here for information on how to correctly cite and format it.
If you like my writing style, and feel like you'd benefit from one-on-one tutoring to help you reach your academic goals in any area of psychology, please contact me. From aiding you in succeeding in class, prepping for a major exam, or teaching you the ins-and-outs of research methods, I'm here to help!
