PSY 3030: Research Methods for Psychology

What are Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed Articles?

• Articles that report the results of a research study or make an academic argument.
• Published in academic journals.
• Show what scholars and experts in the field have discovered about your topic and the current conversation around it.
• Peer-reviewed before being accepted for publication, where they are vetted by other experts in their field. The peer-review process helps ensure high quality and accuracy.
• Read and used by professionals to improve their work practices or make informed policy decisions—this is called "evidence based practice."

How are Scholarly Articles Structured?

Most scholarly articles follow the structure seen in the image above. Understanding this structure will help you be a more efficient reader and understand which parts of the article are most useful to you as a researcher.

• Abstract: A summary of the article. Often includes the main research question asked by the author and a brief summary of the findings.
• Introduction: Sets up the argument or research question of the article—what is being studied and why.
  • Literature Review: A summary of previous research that informed the article—usually illustrates gaps in previous research and demonstrates a need for the current article. This may be a separate section or part of the introduction.
• Methods / Methodology: How the research study was designed and conducted, including if they used methods that are quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods.
• Results: What the author found in their research—usually includes statistics and data, often illustrated using charts and graphs.
• Discussion / Findings: An interpretation of what the author found—their main findings or takeaways from the research. This is the "meat" of the author's discoveries and often the most useful part to reference in your own papers.
• Conclusion: What the research means to the field and what questions remain to be answered.

It may seem counterintuitive, but you don't need to read scholarly articles from start to finish—in fact, we recommend you skim and read articles out of order! As you're choosing which articles are most relevant to your research, try reading in this order:

1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Skip to Discussion and Conclusions
4. Circle back to Methods and Results

This allows you to discover what the researchers learned through their study and decide if this is relevant to your own research, before you go back and spend more time looking at their methods and data.

Using the Discussion, Findings, and Conclusions Sections

The Discussion, Findings, and Conclusions sections are typically the sections you should paraphrase or quote in the literature review section of your research proposal. These sections include the main ideas learned through the research study, and so will be useful in your literature review to demonstrate what's already known about your topic or the current trends.

Be cautious about referencing information found in the Introduction section of articles. There's a good chance the author is actually referencing previous research, in which case you would want to use the citation to track down the original article and cite that instead.

Using the Methods Section

In previous classes you may have glossed over the Methods section of articles, but this section is extremely useful in a Research Methods class and for your research proposal! This is the section that describes how the authors designed and carried out the study—what population was included, how they collected and analyzed their data, and other methods critical to their research process.

This means the Methods section of articles can give you ideas for your own research proposal! As you read articles for your literature review, keep track of or highlight the methods used in each study. When it comes time to design your own proposed study, you can refer back to these methods and build on prior works' designs.

Primary source articles describe original research studies; these are also known as empirical articles. Primary source articles are written by the people who conducted the research and mark the first time the research has been published. Secondary sources usually comment on or review primary sources and demonstrate trends over time. Primary sources containing original research start a scholarly conversation, whereas secondary sources continue that conversation through discussion, summaries, and commentary.

You'll most often use primary/empirical articles in your research papers, but secondary sources can be a great way to introduce yourself to a topic or to find a collection of articles related to a topic.
 

Article Examples

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