Psychology Research Guide

Please keep in mind that many psychology databases use "controlled vocabulary." It is very useful to note and use subject terms that are attached to articles you find useful for your research. By using different combinations of terms (ie as search strategy) you will be able to find more relevant articles.

For example if I typed in the search "homeless students" and "school pschology or school pschologist" the results would include articles that focused on "academic acheivement" "educational programs" "school based interventions" "high schools" and so forth. I could then consider combining "school psychologist" "school based interventions" in a new search. Often you will need to combine differen terms together in new searches to find relevant resources. Refer to the Ask a Librarian for help box if you run into problems.

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• Literature reviews are a synthesis and critical analysis of a body of research related to a specific topic. It compares, contrasts, critiques, and connects different authors' work from the body of research on your topic.
• Literature reviews help researchers understand current and former views on a topic, provide the context for why you selected to focus on the topic/problem you selected, and provide a justification for your research.
• Literature reviews typically address three things: the big picture for the problem you're addressing, what has been written about the various component parts of the issue, and the author's goals for the research.
• Literature reviews are like scholarly conversations: It's like you're hosting a dinner party and inviting select guests to converse about a topic. You can't invite everyone, so who will you invite that will be able to carve out some room for their contributions to the conversation?
• Consider concept mapping in order to visualize the ideas and theories and how they interconnect.
• Consider keeping a reading matrix in an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet should include the articles' main argument/hypothesis, methodology, themes, author, and title. This will help you keep track of which article contains which themes.