Research Methods

What is a peer-reviewed journal?

• The journal publishes scholarly articles that are rigorously reviewed by 3-5 scholars in a relevant field. The process of review ensures the quality of research presented in the article.
• Also known as refereed journals.

Wherever you search, try using terms that relate to the method used in empirical research in addition to keywords related to your topic, such as,

• (generalized anxiety AND treatment*) AND (randomized clinical trial* OR clinical trial*)

You might also try using terms related to the type of instrument used, such as,

• (generalized anxiety AND intervention*) AND (survey OR questionnaire)

Make sure to focus your results to peer-review. Usually databases have a peer-review check box or limiter that you can select. Peer-reviewed sources ensure that the studies you find have undergone appropriate scrutiny by other experts.

What do the *, "quotes" and (parentheses) do?

Look for the IMRaD layout in the article, or something similar, to help identify empirical research.

• Introduction: why the article was written, research question or questions, hypothesis, literature review
• Methods: the overall research design and implementation, description of sample, instruments used, how the authors measured their experiment
• Results: output of the author's measurements, usually includes statistics of the author's findings
• Discussion: the author's interpretation and conclusions about the results, limitations of study, suggestions for further research

Refer to the Forms of Evidence page to determine the quality of evidence gathered by a particular study.

Searching for Articles in PsycINFO

This is a tutorial on searching PsycINFO using some of the advanced search features.

How to Identify Peer-Reviewed Sources

The video covers identifying peer-reviewed journals from a website and finding peer-reviewed articles in databases.