Teaching undergraduate students to read empirical articles: An evaluation and revision of the QALMRI method

Reading and comprehending empirical articles are important skills for students to develop, yet many students struggle to identify and connect the essential information from empirical articles. Here we describe and evaluate a scaffolded approach for teaching undergraduate students to read empirical articles called the QALMRI method. The QALMRI is a generalizable instructional tool for teaching students to identify the key conceptual information necessary for the comprehension and critical evaluation of empirical articles. We had students in a first-year introductory course and students ina third-year research methods course read empirical articles and complete QALMRI outlines throughout the semester. We found that students very quickly learned to use the QALMRI outline in both upper and lower course levels, with performance corresponding to traditional written summaries.However, we also found that students consistently performed poorly on some items, prompting an update and revision to the QALMRI method to address these limitations.