Last revised: February 16, 2011

Tutorial for Research in Psychology

Scope: This tutorial is designed to assist students and faculty who are conducting bibliographic research in psychology.

When using this tutorial, if you have questions or need additional information, please contact Glenn Moreton, the Psychology Librarian, at moreton@umd.edu.

Table of Contents

• How to Conduct Scholarly Research
• Basic Techniques for Searching the Catalog & the Research Port Databases (Using Boolean Logic)
• Research Port Databases
• Using Web Sources
• Other Tools

HOW TO CONDUCT SCHOLARLY RESEARCH

To conduct scholarly research, students must pick the best sources of information. In most cases these are scholarly books and journals. In some cases, Internet Websites may be used, provided that the information is up-to-date and reliable (note: see Using Web Sources in the latter part of this document).

The University of Maryland Libraries Home Page has two tools* that provide entryways to scholarly research: the Catalog and Research Port. The Catalog is where one looks to locate books (and also other materials, such as government documents, theses, films, etc. ) that the Libraries own. If you need to locate journal articles then click on the Research Port link and use the databases. Most of these databases are indexes that will help you find articles in scholarly journals.

• Searching for Books:

  Search the Libraries' Catalog for books and other materials (including videos and government documents) that are owned by the University of Maryland Libraries. To search on your topic, start with a "word/s anywhere" search.

  • If you are conducting a search with numerous search terms, go to the "Advanced Search" screen option. Doing this will provide you with multiple search boxes.

  • When you do find a citation that you like, click on that item listing to get more information. For example, click on the "availability" link to see if that item is available (it will indicate "on shelf") or is already checked out by another user (as indicated by a due date). If it is available, use the call number to see where the book is located. To locate books in McKeldin Library, use the directory that is located at the top of the McKeldin Library Floor Plan to learn on which floor you will find books of a given call number. When looking at the catalog record, also note whether the book is in the regular "Stacks" or "Folio Stacks"--at McKeldin these are separate stack areas, both located on the same floor.

  • When you look at availability page of a record and see that the item is checked out my another user, you can still get the book if you click on the "request" button and complete the requested information. The Library will then attempt to get the book from the library at another UM System campus for you, or the Library may recall the book from the person who has it checked out.

  • Further information about how to use the Catalog is available in a printable Catalog Guide.

  
  
• Searching for Journal Articles:

  Research Port is a gateway to databases and electronic journals to which the Libraries subscribe. Use these databases to search for journal articles.

  • If you are off campus, and select “Research Port” from the Libraries’ homepage, you will be asked to input your directory name and password (i.e., the same name and password that you use to open your campus e-mail).

  • When you are on the Research Port page, click on the “Databases” link. You may then look at individual databases by selecting the “by database name” link and entering the desired title. Or you may look at lists of all of the databases assigned to a given topic (by selecting the “by subject category” link). (Note: Be sure to click the "Databases" link rather than the "Journals" link. The reason is that "Databases" allow you to search thousands of journals at once, whereas the "Journals" link limits your search to one journal title at a time.)

  • It is not recommended that you do not use the "Quick Search" options to search for journal articles. This tool preselects only 5 databases for you, and it does not include family science databases or health databases among those. Thus it will not be very helpful for family science assignments.

  • Often your professors will want you to search only for articles in scholarly journals (i.e. not in popular magazines or newspapers). Most--but not all--of the databases primarily search scholarly (also called "peer-reviewed") journals. If you are not sure whether or not a journal is "scholarly," the following guide may help you decide: Identifying Periodical Types. If you are using an EBSCO database (e.g., Family and Society Studies, SocIndex, MEDLINE, Health Source, PsycInfo, Academic Search, etc.) then you can insure that you have scholarly articles by checking the box that indicates "Peer Reviewed."

  • IMPORTANT TIP: If you find a citation for an article that you need, but the full-text does not appear to be available on-line, the next step is for you to hit the “Find It” button. By doing this you will learn if there are possibly full-text source links that did not appear on the previous screen. If there are no full-text links, the “Find It” screen will tell you if the journal that contains the desired article is listed in the Library Catalog. If it is, you may click on the Catalog link that appears on the screen to get the call number of the journal. With this call number you can determine library location where you can physically retrieve the journal (and the desired article).

  • If the Libraries do not own a journal or book that you need, Interlibrary Loan can possibly get it for you. This is a free service offered to all patrons who have a current UM ID. The ILL office will search libraries throughout the nation to get books, periodical articles, dissertations, microforms, government documents, and technical reports that you may need. All you need to do is to submit an Interlibrary Loan Online Request Form. ILL usually receives the requested items in about two weeks. A link to this form is also available on the “Find It” screen whenever the article is not available through other means (i.e., a full-text copy online or a print copy through the Library Catalog).

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BASIC TECHNIQUES FOR SEARCHING THE CATALOG & THE RESEARCH PORT DATABASES

• Search using the words AND, OR, and sometimes NOT, to connect key terms. This technique is known as Boolean searching. Use this technique rather than randomly searching individual terms, or rather than searching a complete prose phrase or question (e.g. "Find information about developing communication skills of autistic children). Instead, you should identify key terms, the most important words in the search phrase (e.g. "communication skills"; "autistic"; children"), and use these terms with the Boolean connectors (e.g. "communication skills" AND "autistic" AND children") when conducting the search.
  Example:
  communication and children and autistic
  
  
• The word AND narrows a search. So, if the search yields too many results, you can reduce the number of "hits" by adding an additional required term and connecting it to the other terms with the word AND. For example if our search about communication skills in autistic children gives us too many results, we can narrow our topic to focus on verbal skills. Thus we would add the word "verbal" connecting it with "AND" as follows:
  
Example:
verbal and communication and children and autistic


• The word OR expands a search. If you have few hits, or if you want to conduct a thorough search, search keywords and also words that are related to those keywords (including other forms of the word, and also including synonyms and related words), and connect the words with the word OR. For example in addition to searching on the word, “autistic” you can also search on the word "autism" in order to get more hits. Also you may wish to search on both the "child" and its plural, "children." In addition to searching on the word verbal, you might search on the related term, "vocalization." As explained previously, be sure to put the word OR in between these related terms.
Example:
verbal OR vocalization
AND
communication
AND
child OR children
AND
autistic OR autism

(Note: one way to find synonyms and related words to use as search terms is to use the Thesaurus that is available in "PsycInfo" (that can be accessed via the toolbar at the top of the search screen). When using this function, be sure to conduct a "Relevancy Ranked" search, not a "Term Begins With" search. Also note that the Thesaurus function is available only when one uses "PsycInfo" or "PsycAbstracts" individually--not when they are used in combination with one another.)



• You may wish to use what is called a "truncation symbol" (in most databases it is designated by an asterisk: *). This device merely offers a shortcut that enables you to skip having to type different forms of a word; here is an example: placing asterisk expanded the search (*) after "communicat” enables you to search any word that has “communicat” as a stem. Thus in this instance it simultaneously searches for the words “communication OR communicate OR communicates OR communicating." Similarly, rather than use the words "children OR child," I could achieve the same result merely by typing "child*". Likewise, I may wish to use "austis*". Again, I could have written all of these words--including the "OR" in between each of them--but this is an easier, quicker way to do it.
  Example:
  Example: verbal OR vocalization
  AND
  communicat*
  AND
  child*
  AND
  Autis*
  
  

• An additional way to narrow searches is by searching for a given term only if it is used in the title or is used as a subject. The catalog and most databases automatically search for the desired term throughout citation (i.e. the database will search for the word in the title, the author, the subject, the abstract or summary of the article, etc.). In most cases one will see the term “Default Fields” or “All Fields” to indicate that all or most of the fields are being searched. If your search produces too many citations, and many of them appear irrelevant to your topic, you may search for the term only if it is listed in the title or as a subject. To do this, change the search menu item from “Default Fields” or “All Fields” to “Title” or “Subject” options (Note: Some databases use the term “Descriptors” instead of “Subject”).
  


• Important: Before beginning your search, you should note that the Catalog and most Research Port databases do not recognize phrases unless you put the phrase in quotation marks. So, be sure to enclose phrases such as “nonverbal communication,” “mental health," “cognitive therapy,” etc. in quotation marks. If you do not, the search engine will search for each word separately rather than side by side. This will give you a lot of irrelevant results. Also note that the Catalog will only search for two word phrases—nothing longer; Research Port Databases do not have this limitation.

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By going to the Uniersity of Maryland Library's Research Port page, you can get access to the more than 300 bibliographic databases. As explained previously, these databases are indexes that allow users to perform comprehensive searches for journal articles. Such searches will yield either article citations or full-text articles, depending on the respective indexes and articles. In addition to searching journals, most of these indexes also search other types of documents such as conference proceedings, research reports, book and book chapters, and government documents.

Key databases for psychology research are:

• PsycARTICLES
  Searchable database of full-text articles from 42 journals published by the American Psychological Association.
  


• PsycINFO
  PsycINFO indexes more than two million items in nearly two thousand journals, technical report series, and selected dissertations. Covering materials from 1872 to the present, PsycINFO is the single most comprehensive file for coverage of all areas of psychology.
  

Because both of these databases are databases provided by the EBSCO company, they and other EBSCO may be searched simultaneously, rather than one-by-one. To do so, click on the "Choose Databases" option to get a menu of the databases and make your selection. (Note: As explained previously, do not do search several databases simultaneously if you wish to first use the thesaurus to find search terms.)

A multidisciplinary database that likely will be useful is:

• Academic Search Premier
  This is a multidisciplinary database that presents articles from 3000 general, humanities, social science, and science periodicals from over 1700 peer-reviewed journals. Many of the articles are available full-text. This database contains many popular magazines, so if you do use this database, be sure to check the box that indicates that you want to search only "peer-reviewed" scholarly journals.
  

• Biological and Medical Sciences
  This link simultaneously searches a variety of medical and scientific databases provided by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts.
  


• CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature)
  CINAHL covers over 1600 professional journals in nursing and allied health.
  


• Health Source: Consumer Edition
  This database researches more that 300 periodicals, including Harvard Health Letter and Prevention, that look at consumer health information/topics.
  


• Health Source: Nursing Edition
  This database researches nearly 600 Scholarly full text titles covering nursing and allied health.
  


• Medline
  The premier medical database, Medline indexes 4,600 biomedical journals published in the U.S. and 70 foreign countries.
  


• Neuroscience Information Framework
  This resource provides access to a wide range of publically available neuroscience infromation including bioinformatics data, images, grants and much more.
  

Other databases that might be helpful include (but are not limited to) these:

• The Business Source Completedatabase is a business database that covers a very wide range of topics. As such, it is a good source of information that deals with organizational and industrial psychology.
  


• The education databases,Education Research Complete and
• ERIC, both provide much in-depth information on cognition and learning.
  


• Family & Society Studies Worldwide. This is the primary family resource. As such it can be used to find articles having to do with a wide variety of interpersonal relationships, counseling, and family therapy topics. Focusing much on children, aging, and the elderly, this database is a source of information on human development.
  


• SocIndex . This sociology database indexes more than 1,300,000 records, including some relevant to social psychology.
  

Finally, if you want to research a topic completely, consult a citation database:

• These databases include, the Sciences Citation Index and the Social Sciences Citation Index.
  In addition to providing routine journal searching, these specific databases have the unique feature of allowing one to see what other journal articles have cited, have referred to, a given journal article. Thus if you have a particular article that is relevant to your research, the citation feature will let you see other articles that cited this given article (and similarly, articles that this article cited). Most of these cited articles will therefore cover the same or similar topics and will be of use in your research.
  

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USING WEB RESOURCES

Often students think they can get all of the information they need merely by using a search engine such as Google (note: we are referring to the original Google search engine--not to Google Scholar--see additional note at the bottom of the section) to browse the Internet. Although some useful information may be found this way, this is not the primary route for scholarly research:

• General Internet searches will yield only a very small percentage of the "scholarly" information that is available on a given topic. Scholarly information is controlled by copyright and thus is available primarily through scholarly journals or through databases, such as the Libraries' Research Port databases, that index these journals. So rather than making data available free on the Internet, scholarly information is controlled by publishers and researchers who want to get paid for their efforts. The Libraries pay for costly subscriptions to scholarly journals and to the Research Port database so that UMCP students and faculty can have free access to this scholarly information.


• Another reason that one should not rely solely on browsing the Net to get scholarly data is that there is no control over the validity of the information. Anyone can create a Web page; consequently, data in some Web sites may contain errors. Wikipedia is an example of a website where there is only limited control over the validity of the information (note: Still Wikipedia may have much helpful information; however, in most instances if you use Wikipedia you should only use it as a first step to get information, and then you should verify that information in more scholarly sources. Often instructors/professors will not allow their students to list Wikipedia as a source in their bibliographies).


• The data in some websites may be intentionally distorted (e.g. due to a particular political bias).


• In other instances the information may be very out-of-date.


• Despite these constraints, researchers often still can get good information by browsing the Internet, but only after carefully evaluating that Web Site and its data. The Libraries have created a guide to Evaluating Web Sites to help students do just that.


• Note: You may wish to use Google Scholar. Unlike the basic Google search engine, Google scholar is not an Internet search engine. It is database that indexes and searches scholarly materials. Thus it is similar to the Research Port databases, though not as large and comprehensive as most.

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OTHER TOOLS

• Research Guides.
  These five guides will direct you to print and electronic reference sources in the field of psychology:
  
  
  
  • Psychology: Brain, Mind, & Behavior
    
  (Includes basic processes, comparative psychology and ethology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology and psychophysiology.)
  • Psychology: General Psychology Resources
    (Includes general works including dictionaries and encyclopedias, biography and history resources, career guides, and style manuals/writing guides. Also provides links to electronic indexes to journals and to Internet sites in psychology.)
  • Psychology: Mental Health
    
  (Includes clinical psychology and counseling.)
  • Psychology: Social, Group, and Cultural Processes
    (Includes social psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, and those fields of psychology-–e.g. cross-cultural psychology, international psychology multicultural psychology—that deal with cultural influences.)
  • Tests and Measurements
    (This guide provides access to specific psychological/educational tests and measurements. It also lists books that deal generally with the field of psychometrics.)
  
  
• The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
  
  When working on a class assignment or research paper, you usually will need to provide a bibliography that lists your sources. Your instructors will require that bibliography follow a strict, standardized format. There are a number of these different format styles. For this class (as well as for other social sciences classes), your instructor will expect you to use the style that is specified in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (often referred to as the "APA Manual." At McKeldin Library, this manual is available in the stacks (call number: BF76.7.P83 1994) and on the Quick Reference shelves, located across from the service desk in the Service Plus Information and Reference Center (simply go the this service desk and ask to use the APA Manual).

  As you will note in the following paragraphs, often it is not necessary to look at the manual itself:

  • Many of the Research Port databases offer a new feature: They will create a bibliographic citation in APA format (and other formats) for the individual article that you select. Here is an example of an EBSCO citation that has a citation icon marked by an arrow in the following example)…
    

    

  
  
  …that you can click to take you to a page that lists citations for your selected article, e.g.:

  
  
  

  • A particularly useful site is "Assembling a List of Works Cited in Your Paper". Created by Duke University, this site provides quick and easy directions for creating citations for articles and books. This tool shows each citation using each of the popular style guides, including the APA Publication Manual.. Also it gives advice about how to avoid plagiarism.
    
    
  • "Citing Sources Using the APA Style" page. The Libraries have created this page that explains more about this style manual.
    
    
  • Another site that may be helpful is the "APA Style Resources" page on Psych Web; it provides links to a number of guides and Web pages that provide writing tips and suggestions for its application.
    
    
  • "Organizing/Citing Tools" page (accessible from the "Reference Shelf" option on the Libraries' home page.

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