Research article reading worksheet

Your reading purpose: 
Paper reference and stable URL: 
Access inspected (full text / abstract / partial): 
Article version and any relevant correction notice: 

For each reading question
Your attempted record before checking: 
Checked record in your own words: 
Exact section, table, figure or page: 
What the source does not establish: 
Unresolved question and next action: 

Keep not reported separate from not checked. Retain the original paper with your notes. This record does not assign a credibility grade, complete a systematic review or test an AI product.

--- Worked reading record ---

Endres, T., & Renkl, A. (2015). Mechanisms behind the testing effect: an empirical investigation of retrieval practice in meaningful learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, Article 1054. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01054
Full text: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01054/full

Worked notes paraphrase Endres and Renkl (2015), © 2015 the authors, published in Frontiers in Psychology under CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The reading prompts and teaching commentary are AI Essay editorial additions; no author endorsement is implied.

Reading question: What did this study ask?
Checked record: Compare free-recall and short-answer retrieval with restudy, and examine proposed explanations of the testing effect with structured texts.
Source location: Introduction, final paragraphs before Materials and Methods
Boundary or next check: Keep the study aim separate from your own essay question. This experiment does not evaluate an AI study service.

Reading question: Who is represented by N?
Checked record: Subjects reports 47 university students. Table 2 repeats N = 47 for each condition; the earlier recruitment total and a separate dropout flow are not supplied.
Source location: Materials and Methods → Subjects; Results → Main Analysis → Table 2
Boundary or next check: Do not add the repeated condition counts to produce 141 participants or invent a recruitment-to-completion history.

Reading question: What differed between conditions?
Checked record: The same participants experienced restudy, free recall and short-answer practice on different texts. Text–condition combinations and presentation order were randomized.
Source location: Materials and Methods → Design; Procedure; Figure 1
Boundary or next check: Within-participant conditions are not three independent participant groups. Inspect how each text was assigned before interpreting a condition difference.

Reading question: What was measured, and when?
Checked record: Three psychology texts translated into German were used. Two computer-based sessions were one week apart; the second assessed all texts using free recall followed by short answers.
Source location: Materials and Methods → Materials; Procedure, second-session paragraph; Figure 1
Boundary or next check: Practice format and later assessment format are separate fields. A one-week text assessment is not a course grade or an indefinite retention measure.

Reading question: What units do the table numbers use?
Checked record: Conceptual aspects were coded, then text-specific outcomes were z-standardized. Table 2 short-answer assessment means are −0.24 for restudy, −0.04 for free-recall practice and 0.29 for short-answer practice.
Source location: Materials and Methods → Materials, coding paragraph; Results → Pre-analyses; Table 2
Boundary or next check: These are standardized outcomes, not percentages or raw marks. The value 0.29 is not 29% correct; do not calculate a percentage improvement from these values.

Reading question: Which comparison supports the main result?
Checked record: The combined retrieval-versus-restudy contrast was significant, while the overall comparison of the two retrieval formats was not significant (p = .118).
Source location: Results → Main Analysis, paragraphs around Table 2
Boundary or next check: Keep the actual contrast attached. A combined contrast does not establish every separate pairwise difference, and non-significance does not establish equivalence.

Reading question: Does a result concern a subset of questions?
Checked record: For initially non-tested short-answer items, short-answer practice exceeded restudy. The exploratory comparison with free-recall practice did not detect a difference.
Source location: Results → Main Analysis, paragraphs around Table 3; Table 3
Boundary or next check: These questions belong to the studied texts. Do not turn a result for this item subset into proof of transfer to every new topic or task.

Reading question: What is interpretation rather than an independently tested mechanism?
Checked record: Participants rated mental effort on a 0–100 scale. Condition differences disappeared after statistical adjustment, which the authors interpreted as support for elaborative retrieval.
Source location: Materials and Methods → Materials, effort rating; Results → Main Analysis, adjustment paragraph; Discussion → Review of Hypothesis
Boundary or next check: Editorial inference: effort was measured rather than independently randomized. Adjustment alone does not independently establish the proposed causal mechanism.