What is a Critical Review?

The critical review is a type of research report but is aimed at demonstrating our skills – our abilities to consume, process and present research literature on a specific topic. We are writing critical reviews to improve our approach toward reading and summarizing the literature we consume. It is similar to the Introduction section of a research report and systematic literature reviews (however, we will not cover systematic consolidation of studies here). The critical review is an approach that is particularly relevant to academic theses, such as for honours, masters, and doctoral degrees.

The critical review focuses on two important tasks required for any quality research report:

Critical reading – considering the strengths and weaknesses of each source of information we read. Every journal article, academic book, mass media report, government report, etc., should be approached critically. This results in a personal analysis of each article/report/etc.

Informative writing – presenting information clearly and accurately. This is of course the main outcome of a critical review paper – how did you present the literature you consumed? Good critical reviews require writers to perform evaluations of the quality of the article/report and then to teach the reader the results of those evaluations.

Who reads a critical review?

This will be an academic skill development assignment – testing your ability to write in this way. So, your readers will be instructors. However, this type of writing has applications in many areas and critically written reports are read by academic, government and industry research consumers.

Critical review is necessary for writing a competent thesis for a university degree (honours and above).
This approach is required for writing official and internal government and organization reports – examples include ABS, WHO reports; clinical reviews of pathology tests/assessments; and industry marketing reports.
Other university coursework assignments will also suggest/require a critical review approach. Developing critical review skills should help improve marks for research report-type assignments.

What is the opposite of a critical review?

Most of the reports/articles you read will not overtly show the authors did a critical review. That is, they will state in their introduction something like “A UK study found cats are two-times more likely than dogs to eat their human owners.” They will then go on to report other studies on related factors. The authors of the introduction did not state the sample size or any method characteristics, other than the nationality of the authors or sample (we don’t know from this statement). That is often quite fine and is very typical. We don’t present critical reviews of every cited work, even in many critical review assignments. For your coursework assignment, you might be required to critically review every work, particularly if the number of sources you cite is limited to 15 or less. So, good writing for a research Introduction and Discussion will include some critical review of the literature, referring to both strengths and weaknesses of some key studies. However, to improve flow and readability, and reduce word count, we don’t present critical reviews for all cited works.