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PSYCHOLOGY: PEER-REVIEWED, RESEARCH ARTICLE

Information Literacy Assignment Guide

You will search the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection database to find a peer-reviewed research article. You may also consider searching the Academic Search Premier or another database depending on your topic, such as a medical database, but first make sure that this is okay with your professor.

Peer-reviewed articles are published in professional journals by and for scholars with extensive educational background in the discipline for the purpose of sharing research and other information. Peer –reviewed articles include a long list of references, which are the sources used by the authors in writing the article. These articles are reviewed by a group of peer experts in the discipline before they are published. Many of these articles are research articles which feature certain sections, as described in Part 2 of this guide.

Peer-reviewed journal articles are very different, therefore, from popular, magazine articles.

Part 1. Find a peer-reviewed research article

First, login to MyMC3 and click the red Library button at the top of the portal page. Next, Click the box titled, ‘Find Articles & More’. Then click the subject, ‘Psychology’ next to ‘Databases By Subject’ and scroll down to select the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection database.

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Once you have selected the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences database, click the ‘Advanced Search’ link (in small blue letters just under the search box). Type your search terms into the find box. Notice that the word ‘AND’ is automatically there to combine your terms. You will also use the word, ‘research’ as one of your search terms, since this will help to find research articles. Next, limit your search to full text. You may want to limit results to articles published in the last five years as well. (You can adjust these and other limits such as page length, depending on your search results). See below:

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Click search to bring up articles. Review the titles for the first couple of pages of articles and point to the magnifying glass to read the abstract (summary) for an article that seems to be interesting and understandable to you. Check the length of the article to make sure it is not too long for you (See record below). Then, click the blue PDF link to open the article. Scan through the article to make sure that it is a research article with some of the sections mentioned on your handout including methodology and discussion, results or conclusions. The inclusion of tables, diagrams and/or charts is also a good indicator that the article presents a research study too. Finally, look for references at the end of the article. These are critical to a research study. Use Part 2 of this handout to identify these sections of your research article.

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PART 2. The Sections of a Research Study

Once you have clicked the PDF full text link, you will be able to view the entire article. The bolded sections below describe the important components of a research article. Look for these sections in your article. The descriptive information provided below will help you to complete the “Psychology Research Study Worksheet.”

1. Title of Journal/Periodical - Do not confuse this with the name of the database when searching online. The title of the journal appears next to “Source” on the “Detailed Record” screen in the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection and Academic Search Premier databases. The Detailed Record screen appears when you click the article title.

2. Title/Authors: This information will also be provided on the “Detailed Record” screen. There should also be information about the authors’ institutional affiliation so you could contact them if you wanted more information. If this information is not on the Detailed Record screen, it will certainly be in the PDF of the article which you will print out. Usually there is more than one author. The authors are listed in order of seniority, so “first author” is the person who is chiefly responsible for the study in most cases.

3. Abstract: A short paragraph that appears on the Detailed Record screen and also at the beginning of the article. Called an “abstract”, it summarizes the study. This is very useful when you are searching for particular kinds of studies because it lets you know whether or not you want to read the whole article.

4. Opening section—often has no heading or subtitle: This gives the background and rationale for the study. It should review the main information about what has already been studied on the topic, and why this study was done. This is sometimes called the “Literature Review”. This is where to look to find out what question(s) the study is aiming to answer.

5. Methods: The Methods (sometimes called Methodology) section gives the nuts and bolts of exactly what was done. This is where the researchers tell you precisely how they conducted the study. This is where to look to find out who the subjects were and how they were obtained for the study.

6. Results: This section gives an analysis of the results. It may report a lot of the statistical analysis and may not be very understandable or useful to you. In most cases, it makes more sense for students in higher level courses who have learned more about research methods and statistics.

7. Discussion: This is where the authors tell you what they think the results mean. This is where to look to find out whether they believe the study answered the question, and what the answer is. They may also mention anything they think is a limitation of the study or something that should be done differently next time.

8. Conclusions/Summary: This section may or may not be there. Sometimes it’s just part of the discussion. It’s a recap of what the study found and next steps.

If you have any questions, please remember to contact a librarian by chat from the library website; by phone (215-641-6594); by email refdesk@mc3.edu; or in person. The librarians will be happy to help!

MBP 2013 with Part 2 adapted from a document provided by A.M. Donohue, Ph. D, Sp 2011

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