PSYC 200: Research Methods & Statistics + Lab (HC) Spring 2024

*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.

Scholarly literature then 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.

How do I find an empirical article?

• There's no perfect way to find empirical articles. Most empirical articles will describe a study that has been done, so you're best bet is to use the word "study" as one of your search words.
   
• Also look at the bibliographies of review articles; the authors likely used one or more primary research articles to write the review.
   

• Some databases (e.g. PsycInfo, PubMed) have a special limit for different types of articles.​