Lin Summary of Article Critique
This article discusses the potential benefits of forgiveness therapy. The authors of this research show interest in forgiveness therapy for inpatient substance-dependent clients. The authors are examining if forgiveness therapy will help reduce anger, anxiety, depression, and venerability to future drug use, while raising the self-esteem of the substance and drug abuse users through forgiveness therapy. Lin, Mack, Enright, and Baskin (2004) discussed how anger and negative emotions are associated as triggers within the realm of substance abuse. The authors also noted that the level of anger and violence were higher among alcohol and drug abusers. In previous …show more content…
The authors identify problems of anger, mood, depression, and violence, which are present in those that are addicted to the use of drugs and alcohol. The researchers establish how traditional therapy techniques are not always helpful to participants and they turn back to those addictive patterns. The authors did not discuss any underlying theories therefore there is no need to mention additional underlying theories. The research was filled with citations however, this particular article was written to flow from point-to-point not citation-to-citation. The length of the introduction was well with in the boundaries of the APA for that reason, subheadings and subsections were not needed in the introduction. The only conceptual key term that was identified was the definition of forgiveness therapy however, when an acronyms were used the words were spelled out then the abbreviations was put in parentheses. The authors cited all factual statements and avoided the use of someone else’s work not being cited. The overall introduction of the literature was effective and appropriate in having a clear flow and …show more content…
Garzon, professor at Liberty University, discusses the four specific questions one should consider when critiquing research articles. Those questions should be examined and answered based on the provided information. The first questions Dr. Garzon addresses what is the researcher wondering? According to the article just evaluated these researchers were wondering whether forgiveness therapy would be beneficial for residential substance abuse treatment patients and if these patients demonstrated less anger, depression, anxiety, and vulnerability to substance use rather than those receiving traditional treatment therapy (Lin, et al., 2004). The next question one must ask is if the hypothesis is clearly stated in this article yes, the hypothesis is clearly stated. The authors hypothesized individuals in a residential treatment facility for drug and alcohol abuse, after receiving the forgiveness therapy one would demonstrate less anger, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability to substance use thus allows for a rise in self-esteem than those receiving traditional residential therapy. The third question one must inquire is do these (hypotheses) flow clearly from the literature review? According to the literature the hypotheses does flow clearly and is quite informational. The final question one should be inclined to examine is whether the design is appropriate to investigate the hypotheses? This question is one that should be examined before the researcher begins his or