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

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Fall 2020: There are three sections of PSYC 100 this semester. This guide is for Professor George Alder's class, section D100.

If you require further help with your assignments after reading this guide, please feel free to contact a librarian at one of our reference service points. 

 

First Assignment: Psychology: Myths & Misconceptions

 

For your first assignment, Psychology: Myths & Misconceptions, you will be investigating a myth or misconception regarding psychological phenomena. Your assignment requires you to find an empirical research article that relates to the myth of interest. Your research article must be from a reputable psychological journal and needs to be indexed in PsycINFO. 

 

Finding a scholarly, peer-reviewed article in PsycINFO

 

You should use the Psychology-specific database PsycINFO to find your scholarly article on your selected myth. 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 scholarly 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 journal: Peer-reviewed or refereed journals have an editorial board of subject experts who review and evaluate submitted articles before accepting them for publication.
 
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?
 

Image of PsycINFO search home page with peer review box checked

Finding an empirical research article

 

Your academic article about your chosen myth should be an empirical research article. 

DEFINITION
 
An empirical research article:  A scholarly article presenting research done using empirical methods, defined by PsycINFO as "scientific methodology based on experimentation, systematic observation, or measurement, rather than theoretical formulation". A empirical research article often has sections such as Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion, for structured reporting of research results. 

On either the main search screen of PsycINFO, or on the left-hand side bar once you've run your search, you can limit your article search by methodology used. 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 article

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

  1. Identify the KEY CONCEPT(S) related to your chosen myth, 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 333,000 results - far too many to browse through! Even after limiting to a ten-year time period, there are still over 169,000 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 = 333,675 results

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

A keyword search for depression AND social isolation and pandemics = 13 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 your first assignment, you will need an empirical article, so you can make use of the methodology limiter. 

You will also need your PsycINFO source to 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, select "academic journals" under the source type limiter.

For your second assignment, Psychology in the Media, you will need a recent article from the past ten years,  so you can 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 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 just 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.

 

Second Assignment: Psychology in the Media

This assignment builds on the library research skills you learned for completion of your first assignment. Please review the first part of this guide for a refresher.

For your second assignment, Psychology in the Media, you will need to:

1) Find a recent (i.e., published in the last 10 years) media report of some psychological study that interests you and that covers a topic that is relevant to Psyc 100 content. Read through the article and ensure that it describes the results of a recent (again published with in the last 10 years) psychological study. Also, make sure that the article provides you with sufficient information so that you can identify and locate the original study that is summarized.

Finding media reports

One place to look for media report is the APA Psychology news portal, PsycPORT.

Other media reports may be found in the library's various news databases such as:

  • Canadian Newsstream Full text access to major Canadian daily newspapers
  • 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.
  • PressReader (current issues of newspapers from around the world in full-color, full-page format)

Finding a copy of the original study

Next, you will need to obtain a copy of the original study on which the media report is based. You can do this (for most studies) by using one of the following options available through SFU's Library.

  1. If you know the journal and issue in which the article appeared, you can most likely obtain a copy by clicking on the A-Z Journals link from the library home page and searching for the journal title.
  2. If you know the author and year for the article, you can most likely obtain a copy searching PsycINFO from the Library databases link from the library home page

Recommended guide:

From citation to article: Find the full text of an article from an article citation

 

HELP!
 
Please feel free to Ask a Librarian if you require further research assistance with your assignment, including for more help with finding a media report on a psychological topic and help tracking down the original study, and for questions about using APA style. We are happy to help! We can also help 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.