How to write a critical review

Our guide on what it means to think critically when assessing a piece of writing for a student assignment or a workplace project.

When an academic assignment asks you to “critically review” or include a “critical analysis” of the work of other people, it generally means that you’ll need to “think critically”. This means analysing and assessing the work in terms of what the author was trying to achieve, the approach they took, how they conducted the research, and whether the outcomes were valid and acceptable.

A critical review evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of an item’s ideas and content. It provides description, analysis and interpretation that assess the item’s value. It’s an exercise that can be carried out on many different types of writing, but is most often carried out on a report, a book or a journal article.

Thousands of publications relevant to HR appear every year, via established journals, websites, management consultancy reports and universities all over the world. With so much information becoming available, many of which offer new ideas, new HR theories and approaches, it’s important that HR practitioners can evaluate whether what they read is valid, sound and unbiased. We can’t take everything we read at face value, and it’s an important skill, and a very important activity to conduct, if you’re going to base corporate change and your proposals to management on information from published sources.

On this page

• Selecting an item to review
• The critical review process
• Writing the critical review
• Useful contacts and books
• View our other study guides

Selecting an item to review

For study purposes, it's likely that you'll be asked to carry out a critical review of one or more journal articles. You may be directed to a specific journal article, or asked to select one based on your own research on a particular topic, or on a topic of your choice.

If you're given options to make a choice, you're more likely to achieve the required outcome if you use well-known academic journals. These might be found in a library, on HR websites such as HR Focus, or via any online journal hosting service, such as EBSCO which is provided free to CIPD members.

An article will only be useful for a critical review assignment if the author has stated what the question was, how the research was done and the outcomes or conclusions based on the facts and evidence listed.

What is a journal?

A journal (sometimes also called a “ periodical ” ) is a publication produced on a regular continuing basis – it may be weekly, monthly, quarterly (every three months) or annually.

The titles of journals (for example The Journal of Occupational Psychology ) indicate the main topic focus of the articles contained in it.

As they are published regularly, journals usually have volume and issue numbers, and sometimes months, to identify them.

• A volume usually covers a specific year – so, for example, volume 45 may be all the issues published in 2013.
• A n issue number refers to a specific instalment of the journal within that volume – they are often numbered issue or number 1, 2, 3, etc.
• A s well as, or instead of, a volume and issue number, some journals use the month of publication. This information is often crucial in finding specific articles.

There are two main types of journal :

• Academic journal (also called scholarly journals) – T hese often contain research articles written by subject experts; they contain academic commentary and critical evaluation of issues by experts. The articles will be written in an academic style and they may be “ refereed ” or “ peer-reviewed ” – that is they articles are assessed, often by members of an editorial board who are experts in the field, before they are accepted for publication. Articles from this type of journal are usually suitable for a critical review exercise. The International Journal of Human Resource Management and Harvard Business Review are examples.
• Trade or professional journals – T hese usually contain news articles and comment on current issues. The articles often contain practical information and are written in everyday language. They also often have a “ jobs ” section and news of people in that profession. They are likely to be written by journalists rather than academics and don't usually have such rigorous publishing criteria. These articles may not be so suitable for a critical review exercise. People Management is an example.