When you read a journal article (or write a lab report), you should be able to find the following information.

1.             What was the problem the authors addressed? Why is it important?

2.     What are the objectives or hypotheses?

3.     What did the authors do, and where (methods)?

4.     What did the authors find out (results)?

5.             What are the conclusions?  Do they answer the original question?

When you critique a journal article (which you will do later this semester), you will also address questions such as the following.

6.   What background information or ecological understanding is needed
       to understand the research?

7.  What are the strengths of the study?  Do you have suggestions for
      improvement?

8.     Are the conclusions supported by the results? How far could the conclusions be extrapolated?

9.     What new research could be stimulated by the results of this study?