Psychology 100 (PSYC 100) Library Research Guide (Lim)

ARCHIVED FOR SPRING 2022 AS NOT BEING TAUGHT THIS SEMESTER BY PROF LIM

Fall 2021: There are four sections of PSYC 100 this semester. This guide is for Professor Diana Lim's class, section D300.

 

HELP!
 
Please feel free to Ask a Librarian if you require further research assistance with your assignment after reading this guide. We can help guide you to find a popular news article or primary research article on a psychological topic, and with questions about using APA style. We are happy to help! We can also assist with research strategies, such as learning how to narrow or broaden your search results, and with navigating the library's information resources as efficiently as possible.
 
For help with writing your paper, the Student Learning Commons provides a range of support for students, including consultations, workshops, handouts, and groups.
 

 

Assignment: Psychology in the News

For your written assignment, Psychology in the News, you will need write an essay that critically examines a popular news report and compares it with a peer-reviewed psychology article of the same topic.

You will need to find a popular news article that:

  1. Discusses a psychology topic that is relevant to Psychology 100 (see your syllabus for a full list of chapters covered in Psyc 100)
  2. Was published in the last 10 years
  3. Describes the psychology topic in enough detail that you can draw conclusions about the topic 

Two recommended websites to locate popular news articles:

News articles may also be found in the SFU Library's news resources, such as:

  • Canadian Newsstream Major Canadian daily newspapers (such as the Globe and Mail, National Post and Vancouver Sun) as well as small market newspapers and weeklies published in Canada.
  • CBCA Complete Canadian periodical collection for current events. Publications include scholarly journal articles, trade publications, dissertations, books, newspapers and magazines. TIP: Limit your search to source type "magazines" and/or "newspapers" - in this search, otherwise, academic articles may show up.
  • Psychology Today Read the full magazine here.
    • Select the second option, EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier, from the library's catalogue
    • Either Browse Psychology Today by using the dates on the right, or Search Within This Publication (link on left)
  • PressReader Current issues of newspapers from around the world in full-color, full-page format. 

Finding a primary research article in PsycINFO

You will also need to find a primary research article that is on the same topic as your popular news article, and that has been published within the last 10 years.

You should use the Psychology-specific database PsycINFO to find your primary research article. Please log into PsycINFO via the SFU Library website to ensure you are granted full access as an SFU student. (If accessing the database from Google or another search engine, you may be prompted for payment).

Of note, virtually all of PsycINFO's indexed journals are scholarly. This distinguishes PsycINFO from other subscription databases such as Academic Search Premier which contain a mixture of academic and popular/practitioner articles. 

After finding your article you will still need to look at the article and double-check whether or not it is a primary research article. For example, you may find an article that comes from a scholarly journal, but is, in fact, a book review or editorial published in that journal, not a research article.

Your article should also be peer-reviewed. While almost all scholarly journals are peer-reviewed, there are a handful that are not. You can check the "peer reviewed" box in PsycINFO as part of your search as an added measure.

 

DEFINITIONS
 
Peer-reviewed journalPeer-reviewed or refereed journals have an editorial board of subject experts who review and evaluate submitted articles before accepting them for publication.
 
Primary research article: an article where the authors have conducted new research and report results. (In contrast, a review article will summarize many articles on a given topic, but will not report new results; an editorial article will offer an opinion on a topic, but will not report new results, etc.). A primary research article usually has paper sections such as Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion.
 
Scholarly journal: Also known as an academic journal, scholarly journals are are written by and for faculty, researchers or scholars. To learn more about how to identify a scholarly journal, please view What is a Scholarly (or peer-reviewed) Journal?
 

Peer Review Limiter in PsycINFO:

Image of PsycINFO search home page with peer review box checked

 

TIP: You can limit your search by methodology used to narrow in on primary research articles. On either the main search screen of PsycINFO, or on the left-hand side bar once you've run your search, choose the limit empirical study. This will help eliminate articles that fall outside your assignment requirements, such as literature reviews. 

(Of note, an article may have more than one methodology classification in PsycINFO, so you do not need to worry about, for example, losing any twin study (methodology limiter) study by selecting the empirical study limiter.)

Recommended videos:

Using the Methodology Limiter in PsycINFO (YouTube tutorial, 1m 45s)

Find Three Peer-Reviewed Empirical Articles in PsycINFO (YouTube tutorial, 2m 4s)

 

Finding an on-topic primary research article

Before you start searching, it helps to clearly understand your topic.

  1. Identify the KEY CONCEPT(S) related to your topic, for example: drug abuse*. 
  2. Make a list of RELATED SEARCH TERMS for each concept you can include to increase your results. If a simple search for drug abuse, for instance, is not providing a large enough pool of results, you may wish to add more keywords that represent similar or synonymous concepts: drug dependency OR drug addiction, etc. Use the boolean connector OR in-between each related search term.

Research Concepts Worksheet Use this worksheet to help brainstorm keyword ideas.

* = Drug abuse is a example topic used for illustration purposes only

TIP: BOOLEAN OPERATORS allow you to combine terms to narrow or broaden your searches.

AND requires ALL terms to be found in search results
Example: drug addiction AND neurobiolology

       OR requires ANY term to be found in search results        Example: drug addiction  OR alcohol abuse OR drug dependency OR inhalant abuse          OR will bring more results; AND will bring less. Adjust accordingly.   "Quotation Marks" around your keywords will make the database search your words together as a phrase.   Example: a keyword search for drug abuse will bring up articles that have abuse as a keyword and drug as a keyword anywhere in the article, whereas a search for "drug abuse" will bring up articles that specifically have the phrase drug abuse in them.

 

A good way to enter search terms into a database like PsycINFO is to devote one search box to each concept.

 

ADD ADDITIONAL SEARCH TERMS TO REFINE RESULTS. Some keyword searches in PsycINFO will yield a large number of results. For instance, a keyword search for depression in PsycINFO currently retrieves over 340,000 results - far too many to browse through! Even after limiting to a ten-year time period, there are still over 163,000 results. To narrow down your results, try adding additional keywords related to your topic, using the boolean connector AND in-between each search term. For instance, if you are researching depression as related to social isolation during pandemics, you could try:

Keywords: Depression AND social isolation AND pandemics

A keyword search for depression = 340,750 results

A keyword search for depression AND "social isolation" =  2,566 results

A keyword search for depression AND "social isolation" and pandemics = 49 results

The more specific you are with your search requirements, the more specific your results will be!

 

Using search limiters

 

On either the main search screen of PsycINFO, or the left-hand side bar once you've run your search, you can limit your article by various parameters. For instance:

  • Your primary research article from PsycINFO should be an academic article (also called a scholarly article). Because PsycINFO indexes other sources such as dissertations, book chapters, and encyclopedias as well, try limiting your search to academic articles only, by selecting "academic journals" under the source type limiter.
  • To limit to articles from the past ten years, make use of the publication year limiter. 

Image of PsycINFO search results, with the limiters of publication year and source type highlighted

Obtaining full text access to your article

Some databases provide the full text of all of the articles listed in it, while others provide only the citation. PsycINFO offers a combination of full text articles and citations to articles. In both cases, the article is considered to be "indexed in PsycINFO".

When PsycINFO provides only the citation, SFU Library might still provide access to the full article, but through a different database. To see if we have the full text of the article elsewhere, simply click on the "Get@SFU" link in PsycINFO and follow the links to see which other databases might have the full text.

(Note: SFU Library provides access to over 100,000 online journals, and over 500 databases, so we often have access elsewhere! If we do not have access, you may still likely obtain online access by submitting a free interlibrary loan request.)

Screenshot of search results where the first two articles do not have full text, but the third result does.

 

APA citation and style

The American Psychological Association (APA) Style Manual provides the main writing, formatting, and citation style guidelines used in the field of Psychology. Importantly, the Manual provides guidance on how to cite your sources in-text and in your reference list.

APA recently released the 7th edition of the APA Style Guide in late 2019. This is the first new edition in 10 years. 

Helpful online 7th edition APA resources:

Note: The SFU Library normally lends out copies of the APA style manual itself. Unfortunately, no digital copies of the APA style manual are available for institutional purchase at this time.