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PSYC 210: Developmental Psychology (HC) Fall 2024

Psychology 210: Developmental Psychology (Lei)

Popular Literature Versus Scholarly Literature

  Popular Scholarly
Author Staff writer; journalist Expert in the field; known credentials
Audience General public Scholars, researchers
Language Little technical language or subject-specific jargon Uses technical language and subject-specific jargon
Coverage Broad topics; shallow coverage; shorter length Narrow topics; in-depth coverage; longer length
Documentation Usually no bibliography; may have links throughout Bibliography present
*Peer-reviewed? No Usually

*To tell for certain if an article is peer-reviewed, Google the journal's website. The About section, Author Guidelines, or information on the editorial process will typically tell you if articles within that journal are peer-reviewed.

Primary Literature Versus Review Literature

Scholarly literature falls into two categories: primary literature and review literature

Primary literature
(AKA primary research articles AKA empirical articles)     

  • An empirical article reports the findings of original research done by the authors of the article.
     
  • Empirical articles are usually published in peer-reviewed journals.
     
  • An empirical article poses a research question or states a hypothesis.
     
  • ​To determine whether or not you've found an empirical article, scan the article (or even just the abstract). Look for an introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections.

Review literature

  • Review articles in the sciences summarize previously reported findings rather than present new findings, often pulling together the findings of multiple empirical articles. In doing so, review literature often gives a broader view of the current state of understanding in a given topic area.

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