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Develop Your Own Search Strategy
- Using your textbook, Google, or your own personal experiences for ideas, find some introductory information on something you're curious about (and that might lend itself to designing an experiment around).
- Using ideas from the information you found, what is one possible research question or an experiment you could do. Write one or two sentences max about it.
- What are the two or three main concepts in your research question/experiment? These will be your initial search words. Get rid of any extraneous words.
- Using those main concepts, conduct an initial search in the PsycInfo database and scan the titles and/or some abstracts.
- Add synonyms, acronyms, and variant spellings to your search strategy.
- Find one empirical research article. Be prepared to describe your process.
