PSYCH 101 - General Psychology - Baart: Part 2: Find an Article in a Peer Reviewed Journal

Part 2: Search for an Article in a Peer-Reviewed Journal

Use APA PsycArticles to find an scholarly research article published within the past 10 years (e.g. gender differences in aggression, eating disorders, dreams, or stress experienced by students). The study needs to include more than 100 participants.

Cite your article in APA format and summarize it in two or three pages. For Part 2 you will need to provide the full article along with your summary.

Set Your Limiters

• Click on the link to APA PsycARTICLES above. If you are off campus, log in with your MyWCC userID and password.)
• In the top search box enter the subject terms to search Do not type whole sentences.
• Under Limit Your Results check the Full-Text box.
• Under Limit Your Results enter the date limiters 2013 - 2023 in the boxes under Year of Publication. 
• Under Limit Your Results check the Scholarly (Peer-Reviewed) Journals box.
• Under Limit Your Results highlight EMPIRICAL STUDY in the Methodology box.
• Click Search to see your results.

View Your Results

PsycARTICLES will display your results in a list with newer articles toward the top.

• Browse through the article titles (in blue) to find something that sounds interesting. Below the article title are the citation information and subject terms.

View Abstract

Click on the magnifying glass icon  to the right of an article title to view the abstract

• The Abstract is a summary of what the article is about.
• Read the Abstract to see if it is something you are interested in.

Verify the Number of Participants

Verify that the article is a research study using more than 100 participants:

• Browse the abstract to find how many participants were in the study. (e.g. "..using a sample of 256 acute care nurses..."; "...a community sample of 1,742 adults with type 2 diabetes..." )
• Look for (n=number) where n is the number of participants in the study. (e.g. "...Individuals with a diagnosis of depression (N = 102)...")
• If you do not find this information in the Abstract, check the Methodology section of the article.
• If this information is neither in the Abstract nor the Methodology section, the article is not a study you can use for this assignment.

Access the Full-Text Article

• In your results list, click on the title of an article to get the full record.
• Click the pdf full text icon in the upper left to access the full text of the article. For Part 2 you will need to hand in a copy of the article along with your citation and summary.
• Use the email link under Tools to send a link to the article record.

Cite Your Source in APA Format

• To get an APA formatted citation, click on the CITE button in the Tools bar and browse to APA.

When searching the databases for articles, do not type in whole sentences.

e.g. search Depression AND Adolescents

Think of other terms that can be used to describe the event you are researching and try those also: e.g. Depression, Mental Illness, PTSD, Stress; Adolescents, Teens, Youth;

Use the asterisk * to truncate words and widen your search. Adolescen* will search for Adolescent, Adolescents and Adolescence.

Use quotation marks to keep phrases together: e.g. "Mental Illness" 

Set Your Limiters:

View Your Results

View the Abstract

Verify the Number of Participants

Access the Full-Text Article

Cite your Article in APA format