Critical Analysis of Psychological Research: Rationale and Design for a Proposed Course for the Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum

Critical thinking about psychological research appears seldom to be taught to an advanced level on UK psychology degrees, or to be allocated a substantial amount of learning/teaching time at any level. It is likely that students may graduate with an inaccurate and passive uncritical view of discipline knowledge unless the relevant skills needed to appraise that knowledge are acquired. A common assumption seems to be that this is implicitly recognised in traditional research methods teaching, and the skills are therefore emergent from conventional lectures, practicals and research projects. Since the manifold pressures on students and teachers combine to increase the reliance on secondary sources, the explicit provision of a course in critical thinking about research should be considered. It is argued that this is best offered at a relatively late stage in a psychology degree programme. Since psychology graduates are more likely to become research users than research producers, it is argued that skills training for critical analysis of research reports will be professionally advantageous. A framework for a critical analysis course is described to enable students to undertake a comprehensive critical appraisal of a research article. This is based on a long-established final-year course that treats critical analysis, of published research papers, as the vehicle for training students to treat the literature with more circumspection, and the respect it deserves.