Literature Search Strategies: Suggested Steps

1. General Background Knowledge

Read the original article. First, try to understand the original article on its own. Then, check your understanding against textbook descriptions. Note where your understanding and the textbook description diverge, or where the textbooks don’t go into as much detail as the original article.

Start with a general psychology textbook or psychology encyclopedia. First you want to get a general background on your topic. Textbooks and psychology encyclopedias are a good place to start. They provide brief overviews of psychological theories, topics, and phenomenon. One nice bonus is that they will refer to other researchers who are also involved in phenomenon X. Look in the back of the book for the complete reference information, than look up the abstracts in PsychInfo to see if you want to get these articles. The more specific the textbook, the more initial information you will be given (e.g., a social psychology textbook v. a general introduction textbook). Textbooks and encyclopedias can be found in the library, the latter are usually in the reference section of the library. Also, try the psychology area of the library website: SJSU Research Topics à Psychology

Be forewarned: textbooks are a good place to start, but they are not as up-to-date as other sources, and they only highlight the basic elements of any given theory or topic.

2. Deepen Your Knowledge of the Topic

Find a good review or theoretical article on your topic. In addition to the textbook references, you should expand your search to articles or chapters that describe or review the theory of interest. These articles will also be key in identifying the most important empirical articles relevant to your topic. The following are good sources for this type of article:

Annual Review of Psychology

Psychological Bulletin

Psychological Review

When using psychinfo, you can limit your search to “literature reviews.” This is one way to locate these types of articles. These types of articles are typically more up-to-date than textbooks (depending on how recent the article is), and will give you a much richer, more nuanced report on your topic. Find the most recent article/chapter that you can. Finally, like textbooks, you will discover numerous references cited in this type of article that can follow-up on.

Be forewarned: You can draw on literature review articles for your paper, but most of your paper should be reviewing empirical articles.

3. Dive into the Empirical Literature

Find empirical articles. The Psychinfo tutorial was all about this. You can limit your search to empirical articles in Psychinfo to speed your search.

Be forewarned: Look for key articles in the development of the theory. One clue is that an article is “key” is it is often cited by other researchers after its publication.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Library Tips (Dr. Eldred’s website); psychology area of library website