Article Critique
Anonymous Student
Anonymous University
ARTICLE CRITIQUE 2
Introduction
would effectively aid in the process of creating teams and maintaining them. A lot of research
had been done in this domain to determine the particularities of these effects; however, this
article poises an interesting addition to such research. The article was penned by Dong, Sarkar,
Yang, and Honda (2013) and it aims to describe the decision-making processes of an engineering
committee based upon their verbal tendencies. This article is relevant to the game development
industry as it presents several relevant points regarding decision-making, which in its turn is an
Specific Findings
Design
language model, experimental results, and a discussion section. The authors approach this
subject matter through mathematical calculations and linguistic studies in order to simulate the
specific findings they are aiming to achieve. The mathematical variables in the study represent
the instances where team members in the committee change to alternative decisions based upon
verbal feedback from managers or peers. The authors furthermore based all of their calculations
on previous conducted research that supports their thesis. In the linguistic section of the study,
the authors describe what they refer to as the semantic resources of the “system of appraisal” that
affects decision-making among other behaviors. Then, the authors associate a value to each of
those semantic resources and integrate them in the previous mathematical calculations. Finally,
questionnaires were distributed amongst participating individuals to study the viability of their
calculations.
ARTICLE CRITIQUE 3
Results
The results of the study show that members of a specific team or committee may alter
their original decisions to other alternative options based upon positive or negative appraisal in
regards to these decisions. The authors argue that such results mirrored the probabilities that
resulted from their mathematical calculations. Although the authors viewed the results favorably,
the authors did mention in their discussion section that there has been some inconsistencies in the
responses for verbal appraisal, however, these fluctuations were acceptable to the authors as the
numerous tables that link the mathematical calculations to the received responses, while other
Strengths
The article is information heavy and is remarkably well-designed and is laid out in a
cohesive and professional manner. Since the article is information heavy, the authors have
written the article in a way that is easy for different people to understand. The authors explained
all of their points while providing sufficient data and research to back all of their claims. Another
great aspect of the article is that the authors explained their mathematical calculations along the
way so that even if readers are not very knowledgeable in mathematics, they can easily follow up
and understand what is presented to them and not get disheartened by the complex calculations.
Limitations
Although the study succeeded in achieving several of the intended results, limitations do
exist which threaten the validity of the article findings. First of all, external validity is threatened
in the form of interaction of selection with treatment, which means that there these findings are
not likely to generalize to other people or populations. According to the authors, the study
ARTICLE CRITIQUE 4
utilized a very small sample of participants who were English speaking. Thus, it might be
difficult to generalize the findings to other teams and committees that might speak a different
The second limitation is a threat to internal validity in the form of testing. This threat
results when the administration of the measurement instrument (i.e. test) inadvertently
influences the subsequent responses. When participants respond to measures, they can actually
get some practice depending on the variable. And when surveys or questionnaires are long or
there are numerous surveys to complete, the participant may become tired or bored, resulting in
bias and/or random error. According to the authors, five questionnaires were administered to
participants and each of them required 10 minutes to be completed. This resulted in nearly an
hour of testing per person. Some participants may even have improved in their accuracy just due
to the practice effect. Certainly some participants were likely fatigued and even annoyed,
resulting in less attention, guessing, and even randomly completing some items in order to get
finished. This can be controlled by providing training to the participants as to the importance of
Conclusion
The study was an interesting and revealing read; it presented valid points of research and
debates that would definitely benefit contemporary organizations. The article was well-written
and well-balanced and provided appropriate and sufficient supporting evidence to back the
presented points. The article is particularly relevant in industries where teams are most
prominent such as the gaming industry. Furthermore, the article is very helpful in the upcoming
research as cultural behaviors affect team dynamics and culture and thus it could present
Reference
Dong, A., Sarkar, S., Yang, M., & Honda, T. (2014). A linguistic approach to assess the