A critique is not a summary and it is not a takedown. It is a fair judgement of how much trust a study deserves and how far its findings can travel into practice. This guide covers the questions to ask of quantitative and qualitative articles and how to phrase your answers.
Beginners often spend a whole page retelling what the authors did. Markers read that as a summary and give few marks for it. A critique keeps the description short (a paragraph at most) and spends its energy on evaluation: is the problem well justified, do the methods fit the question, are the conclusions supported by the data, and what would a practising nurse do with the results?
Begin by finding out whether your instructor wants a full-paper critique, a section-by-section critique, or a critique guided by a specific tool. Then choose or confirm the study type, because quantitative and qualitative studies are judged by different standards.
Ask whether the authors show that the issue matters to nursing, whether the literature review builds towards a genuine gap, and whether the aim, question or hypothesis is clear and answerable. A vague purpose usually predicts vague findings. Note whether a theoretical or conceptual framework guides the work and whether it is actually used in the analysis or simply mentioned.
Judge whether the design suits the question. A randomised trial can test an intervention, a survey can describe attitudes, and an interview study can explore lived experience. Then look at the sample: how participants were chosen, how many there were, why that number was chosen, and who might be missing. For quantitative work, ask about power or sample-size justification. For qualitative work, look for how the authors decided they had enough data, often described as saturation or sufficiency.
Qualitative critique is not about numbers but about credibility. Common lenses include credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. Look for evidence such as member checking, peer debriefing, an audit trail, reflexivity about the researchers' own positions, and rich quotations that clearly support the themes. Ask whether the interpretation grows from the data or was imposed on it.
Use a checklist, but write in your own words. Established tools from CASP and JBI give structured questions for many designs. Your critique should answer them in an argued paragraph, not paste a tick-box table unless your instructor asks for one.
Check that the results section reports what was found, not what the authors hoped for, and that the discussion does not claim more than the data allow. Notice whether limitations are honest and whether recommendations for practice or future research are realistic. Finish by weighing the whole: overall, how much confidence do you have, and what is the study useful for? For guidance on placing a study in the wider evidence base, see the EBP paper guide.
Our nursing writers can guide you through the article, structure your evaluation and check your referencing.
Fictional study: a small trial testing whether a bedside education program helps adults with a chronic illness manage symptoms at home.
| Weak | Strong |
|---|---|
| The study had a small sample, which is bad. | The trial enrolled 40 participants from a single clinic without a sample-size justification, which limits statistical power and makes it hard to conclude that the non-significant difference in symptom scores reflects no true effect, and the single site also restricts how far the findings can be generalised. |
The strong sentence identifies the feature, explains its consequence for the conclusions, and stays measured. (The figures are invented for illustration only.)
The JBI website is a useful place to see how critical appraisal is framed for different study types. You may also want to read our literature review guide when you critique several articles together.
Follow your assignment. Many are two to five pages, with each section receiving proportionate space.
Usually yes, but weight your effort towards methods and results, where most quality judgements lie.
Yes, if you give reasons grounded in accepted research standards and, where possible, cite a source.
See our research critique help page or send your article and brief through the order form.