For this assignment, your articles must be: Primary resources, scholarly, empirical, recent, and from a mainstream psychology journal.
That's a lot of jargon. What does it all mean?
A primary resource is one that was created during the time of a study or event. A secondary resource is a resource that analyzes or interprets a primary resource.
For example, a journal article detailing the methods and results of an experiment that is written by the experimenter(s) is a primary resource. A newspaper article about the study is a secondary resource.
Empirical evidence is based on observation and experimentation. So an empirical resource is one that presents the findings of a scientific study, rather than the author's opinions or biases.
A scholarly, or peer-reviewed, article are written by experts in their fields.
How can you tell if an article is scholarly? Generally speaking:
Tip: Click on the Peer-reviewed Journals link on the left side of the screen in OneSearch to only see results from peer-reviewed journals.
For this assignment you should be focusing on articles published since 2000.
OneSearch allows you to refine your results by date. Scroll down to the section labeled "Creation Date" on the left side of your screen, enter 2000 in the From box, and click Refine.
Since this is a psychology class you want to make sure you're getting your articles from a psychology journal and not, say, a physics journal.
There are hundreds of psychology journals - too many to include a comprehensive list here. But you should know how to find the name of the journal your article was published in. If it has the word psychology in the title, it's probably a safe bet. If you find it in a psychology database - like PsycINFO - it's most likely OK. If you're not sure, ask your professor or a librarian.
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