Scholarly journal articles include original / empirical studies and review articles that contribute to the current scholarship on a given topic.
| Original / Empirical | Review | ||
| based on an experiment or study. This type of article will have a methodology section that tells how the experiment was set up and conducted, a results or discussion section, and usually a conclusion section. In psychology courses, you are often asked to find empirical articles. Empirical articles are original research articles. | Literature Review | Systematic Review | Meta-Analysis |
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written to bring together and summarize the results/conclusions from multiple original research articles/studies. This type of article will not usually have a methodology section, and they generally have very extensive bibliographies. |
a form of literature review that comprehensively identifies, appraises, and synthesizes all relevant research on a specifically formulated question. |
combines carefully selected data from previous empirical studies to bring more rigor to a statistical or other analysis. |
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Even if an article is peer-reviewed, it may be helpful to know that the findings may not be that significant and that there are varying levels of scientific evidence. All the article does is report on the findings.
For a quick read, check out Professor Liberty Vittert's article "Numbers in the News? Make Sure You Don't Fall for These Three Statistical Tricks" (2018).
