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Public Health Research Experiences

Resources and tools for students preparing to write about their research. Get help finding and managing all of the sources you use in your paper.

Notes

Once you have found a promising article, you need to critically evaluate it. Find out how it is useful, what its limitations are, and deeply understand it. You will be learning more about those processes in later sessions. The tips on this page can help you get started.

Check for Updates

First, make sure you have the most current information about your article. Sometimes, a mistake will be discovered after the article is published. Many of those mistakes are minor, such as misspelling an author's name, but sometimes they are larger. Be sure that you are evaluating the right content!

 

Look for buttons, links, and icons that say "Check for Updates" or "CrossMark." (Sometimes, you will just get the ribbon icon without words.) Check for notes in the database for the article or the publisher's page for the article. If you find one, click on it and read the message. Some articles do not have them, but checking for them only takes a few seconds.

Check for updates

Check for updates button

check for updates checkmark

Evaluate Your Article

Use the tips from other sessions in this seminar and the sites on this page to think critically about your article as you read it.

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