PSY321 Cross-cultural Psychology

Primary sources in science have to:

• Document original research work. That's called "first disclosure."
• Include enough information for peers to understand and reproduce the work. This helps with the institution of peer review (please see below for a brief video about the peer review process).
• Be indexed in a science journal article database like Web of Science, PsycINFO and Scopus.

Most of the time, we consider peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles to be the model primary sources in science.

“Empirical studies are reports of original research; [… they] consist of distinct sections that reflect the stages in the research process and that appear in the following sequence:” (APA 6th ed., p. 10; APA 7th ed. pp. 4-9, 77-108):

• introduction: statement of the purpose of the paper, and historical background for the research;
• method: description of how the research work was carried out;
• results: what was observed, and how it was analyzed;
• discussion: what are the significance and the interpretation of the findings.

Take a look at this interactive guide to scholarly peer-reviewed articles. It shows all the elements common to empirical studies.

This table can help you to decide whether the article you found is a primary empirical article (scholarly and peer-reviewed) suitable for your literature review in this course:

The following are scholarly peer-reviewed articles that are neither empirical nor primary. These would not be suitable for your literature review:

References:

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, (6th ed., 2nd printing). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.).   https://doi.org/10.1037/0000165-000

Day, RA, and Gastel, B. (2006). How to write and publish a scientific paper. 6th ed. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.

A good starting point is the specialized psychology journal article database called PsycINFO. PsycINFO lets you search all the key research journals in psychology at the same time.

• Access PsycINFO here (or on the Library home page under Popular Databases).
   The search screen will look like this:

•  Scroll down and find the Methodology search limit. Select "Empirical Study":

• Once you have selected the limits, click on Search. Make sure to look at the abstracts of the articles you find. 
• Often the type of study conducted is mentioned clearly in the abstract, and it will always be listed below the abstract under the Methodology.
• Remember: Empirical studies can be quantitative or qualitative, or mixed.

Ulrich's Periodical Directory lets you see whether a journal in which you found your article is scholarly and peer-reviewed. 

Search for the title of the journal in Ulrich's

If the journal is peer-reviewed, you will see a REFEREE'S T-shirt image beside the title: