The Literature Review PSYC 350: Psychology of Women

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The Literature Review PSYC 350 Psychology of
Women

• Charlotte Johnson Jones
• Reference Social Sciences Librarian
• Simpson Library
• Spring 2007

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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 a topic or
  on a question that you propose to answer with
  your own research
• Is almost always the first step in a research
  project or in writing a research paper, thesis,
  or dissertation
• Is often the initial section in a research report
  
• Sometimes stands alone as a review article

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A literature review

• Why do one?
• To determine the state of knowledge on your topic
• To refine your thesis
• To establish your own credentials as a researcher
  with knowledge of the topic
• Review articles are a service to other members of
  your discipline who are trying to keep up with
  research in a given area

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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 The friendships I have with girls
  from college seem different somehow from my
  friendships in elementary school. I wonder if
  anyone has done any research about that? Is it
  just me?
• A possible topic Friendships among college-age
  women

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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, experimental, and
  applied 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
friendships 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 many
irrelevant results
Your search term is in bold. These articles just
mention friendship in the context of other topics.
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This article is about friendship
This article is really about friendship. 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 Friendship as a Subject . . . not just
as a keyword.
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Return to results and use the Subject Headings to
narrow
Click Friendship to see those items that have
this term as a Subject.
There are many fewer results (3031 vs. 1780) and
the irrelevant results are tossed out.
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Choose another Subject to narrow even further
Our original question was about friendship and
college-age women. On this list of subjects,
Human Females is the closest concept to women.
Adolescent Development or Psychosocial
Development might have to do with college-age,
though. To keep your search clean, add just one
variable at a time. Click Human Females to add
that concept to the existing search.
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Notice the result from Dissertation Abstracts
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Words of wisdomabout dissertations . . .

• 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 All Journals or Peer Reviewed Journals
limit to weed out the items you cant/wont use.
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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 Friendship
you can then combine it with another variable.
The are 158 items with the subject Friendship and
the subject Human Females.
Trail of breadcrumbs.
Friendship with a capital F indicates that this
was our Subject search. The small f friendship
was our keyword search.
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Heres the previous search for Procrastination as
a subject term
1780 results again
Now click Refine Search to see another way to
pare down your results.
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Notice how many ways you can refine, or limit,
your search
By date By language, or English only By age
groups By population studied Hold down the
Control key to choose more than one limit from a
dropdown menu.
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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.
(Think of this as moving backward.) Times Cited
looks forward and 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. Also,
because you are moving back in time, they may be
too old for your assignment.
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To find articlesonline or in UMW Libraries
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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Locate Journal Article always opens the same
pop-up
Be sure to allow pop-ups.
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Locate Journal Article always opens the same
pop-up
The article citation is always at the top.
This note indicates that the article is available
in one of the UMW libraries in either print,
microfilm, or microfiche. Click on this link to
open the library catalog and figure out where.
Online holdings in other databases appear here.
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ILL policy for students
Think 10/2/10
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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