You can spend hours looking for articles online. It can be great to browse around and search on Google Scholar for articles to download and read. Unfortunately, once you have acquired a dozen or so articles you may start to feel overwhelmed that you actually have to read these articles. It certainly takes a lot of time to do it right. In this chapter, we will learn how to understand and evaluate the sources you find. We will also review how your research questions might change as you start reading in your area of interest and learn more.

Chapter outline

• 2.1 Reading an empirical journal article
• 2.2 Evaluating sources
• 2.3 Refining your question

Content advisory

This chapter discusses or mentions the following topics: sexual harassment and gender-based violence, mental health, pregnancy, and obesity.