How do you effectively evaluate research?

Thinking of the acronym GRENADE acts as a useful guideline to include higher level evaluation, rather than the basic methodological design criticisms. It helps provide structure to your evaluation and most aspects can used for all studies, incorporates multiple issues and debates into your work.G - Gender Bias, consider if the study has used both men and women and consequently can the results be applied to both genders. If not, what differences might exist between them, how generalising be positive/negative in the real world. Become familiar with the terms androcentric and alpha/beta bias.R - Reductionism, assess how simplistic the theory is and whether more complex things are occurring. What aspects has the theory failed to consider that may be influential.E - Ethical Issues, evaluate wether the study is social sensitive and how the theory or results may impact society. What are the implications of the research and are these detrimental. N - Nature V Nurture, consider which side of the debate the results favour and what the evidence is for this. Understand the importance of an interactionist approach, how falling explicitly onto one side of the debate may have detrimental impacts on society eg. entirely nature suggests individuals have no control over behaviours which leads to lack of responsibilityA - Animal Studies, whether these have been used and how applicable the results are to humans, can they be extrapolated and why/why not.D - Determinism v Free Will, sometimes useful to link to nature/nurture debate. Does the study assume control of behaviour and what implications does this have for society. E - Eurocentrism, is the sample or psychologists biased to a specific culture (usually Western cultures) and how may other cultures differ under the same conditions. Can behaviour be generalised between cultures, what implications might this have if applied eg. types of attachment differ between countries, but does that make one type less desirable?