The Literature Review PSYC 362: Applied Methods

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The Literature Review PSYC 362 Applied Methods

• Charlotte Johnson Jones
• Reference Social Sciences Librarian
• Simpson Library
• Fall 2006

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A literature review

• What is it?
• Is a systematic and thorough examination of the
  research that has already been done on your topic
  or on the question that you propose to answer
  with your own research
• Is almost always the first step in a research
  project, thesis, or dissertation
• Is often the initial section in a research report
  
• Sometimes stands alone as a review article
• Why do one?
• To determine what research has already been done
  on your proposed topic
• To discover methodologies or models that have
  been used successfully (or unsuccessfully) in
  studying your topic or research question
• To refine your research question
• To establish your own credentials as a researcher
  with knowledge of the topic

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Popular magazine?Or scholarly journal?

• Articles in popular publications, such as
  Psychology Today or Time, may provide an overview
  of a topic, give you good ideas for a project,
  and/or be a good place to begin research
• However, the literature covered in the review
  should be from scholarly publicationsalso known
  as academic or peer reviewed journals.
• See Popular vs. Scholarly How to Tell the
  Difference at http//www.library.umw.edu/scholpop
  u.html

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How to begin a literature review

• Start with a fairly broad or general research
  question.
• If you can pick your own topic, consider choosing
  one that you know a little bit about, one that
  interests you, or perhaps one that affects you
  personally.
• For example I havent even started my paper.
  Im afraid Ill never get it right anyway.
• A possible topic Do people procrastinate
  because they are afraid?

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Best databases fora psychology literature review

• PsycINFO
• Database produced by the APA
• Contains citations, abstracts, and some full text
  for journal articles, book chapters, books,
  dissertations, and technical reports
• Database is put into an interface (or platform)
  and sold to libraries and other research
  organizations by several different commercial
  vendors. UMW gets our access to PsycINFO through
  EBSCOhost.
• No matter what platform PsycINFO is on, its
  content is the same. Search features may be
  different.
• Almost all items covered are peer-reviewed or
  scholarly
• Covers clinical, non-clinical, and experimental
  psychology
• Covers, in total, more than 2,000 international
  journals in 25 languages, some as far back as
  1872
• Simpson Library version includes another APA
  database, PsycARTICLES the full-text contents
  for 50 peer-reviewed APA journals going back to
  1985

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A simple wayto search PsycINFO
Do a keyword search for one of your terms. If
you do not Select a Field PsycINFO will perform a
simple keyword search and look for the word
procrastination in the title of the article, in
the abstract, in the name of the journal, and in
the authors name.
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Notice that a keyword search returns some
irrelevant results
Your search term is in bold. The first article on
the list just mentions the authors own
procrastination.
The second article is really about
procrastination. Click on the title to see the
full record.
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Keywords vs Subject Terms
These are the keywords that the authors assigned
to the article.
The Subjects are the Psychological Index Terms
that the APA assigned to the article. These
represent a standardized terminology that is used
throughout PsycINFO and throughout the
profession. We are really looking for articles
that have Procrastination as a Subject . . . not
just as a keyword.
Notice PsycINFO names a specific test used in
this study.
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Return to results and use the Subject Headings to
narrow
Click Procrastination to see those items that
have this term as a Subject.
There are many fewer results and the irrelevant
results are tossed out.
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Choose another Subject to narrow even further
Our original question was about procrastination
and fear. On this list of subjects, Anxiety is
the closest concept to fear. Perfectionism might
have to do with fear of failure, though. To keep
your search clean, add just one variable at a
time. Click Anxiety to add it to the existing
search.
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Notice the breadcrumbsof your search steps
Click a breadcrumb to return to a previous
search. If you click the subject term
Procrastination, you can then combine it with
another variable.
The are 24 items with the subject Procrastination
and the subject Anxiety.
Trail of breadcrumbs.
Procrastination with a capital P indicates that
this was our Subject search. The small p
procrastination was our keyword search.
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Heres the previous search for Procrastination as
a subject term
289 results again
Now click Perfectionism to search for
Procrastination and Perfectionism.
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Notice the result from Dissertation Abstracts
Click Peer Reviewed Journals to narrow results to
scholarly articles only
This is a book chapter
From Dissertation Abstracts
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Words of wisdomabout dissertations . . .

• Sometimes the abstract may be enough to tell you
  about a methodology that has been tried or a
  research problem that has been studied.
• If you track down Dissertation Abstracts in the
  library, you will just see the same abstract all
  over again.
• Getting the entire dissertation is often
  difficult. Most universities require their degree
  candidates to file only one copy of a
  dissertation which is kept in the archives or in
  their librarys special collections. This copy is
  usually not available through Interlibrary Loan.
  Why waste a request?
• Your professor may not consider a dissertation to
  be a fully authoritative source, since it has not
  appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.

Use the Peer Reviewed Journals limit to weed out
the items you cant/wont use.
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Use information in the records to find other
relevant articles
Cited References are the journals, books, and
other items that are cited in this article. Time
Cited . . . leads to articles that have cited
this article. Citation searching, that is
following such chains of references, is a
valuable, well-accepted method of approaching a
literature review.
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An exampleof Cited References
If a cited reference is also in PsycINFO, the
title will be hyperlinked.
Caution Proceed carefully. These cited
references tend to contain typos and, of course,
duplicate references to one article.
Notice the links to full text of these articles.
Unusual, but great!
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Use the Tests and Measures field to find
instruments
Search for the keyword procrastination and choose
Tests and Measures from the dropdown menu.
All these results should be about studies that
used a procrastination instrument of some kind.
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Notice the Cited References
Bingo! Heres the validation of the Lay General
Procrastination Scale and a citation for the
research report in which Lay first published the
scale.
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To locate articles in Simpson Library
Click on the Locate Journal Article Link.
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Locate Journal Article always opens the same
pop-up
The article citation is always at the top.
If not available online, search the catalog for
print, microfiche, or microfilm in the library.
Online holdings in other databases appear here.
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ILL policy for students
Note 10 free requests total per student per
semester.

• Some strategies for keeping ILL requests in check
• Choose research topics with availability of
  articles in mind
• Plan together in your team to pool your free
  requests
• Read abstracts closely to determine the best use
  of ILL requests
• Use full text limiter to obtain as much
  PsycARTICLES content as possible
• Use the Locate Journal Article feature to obtain
  as many articles as possible from the library
• Ask for assistance from the Social Sciences
  Librarian

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Citing Resources

• A literature review is not complete without a
  reference list of accurate citations for all the
  articles, books, dissertations, and other items
  cited in the text of the review.
• Use American Psychological Association (APA)
  citation style to create this list and your
  in-text references.
• For a checklist of all the citation elements you
  should gather as you research, for examples of
  APA style, and more, see Guide to Citing Sources
  at http//www.umw.edu/library/research/guides_to_l
  ibrary_resource/citing_sources.php