1 / 21

Conducting a Search of the Literature

Conducting a Search of the Literature. Your First Writing Assignment. Your First Assignment. Search the literature on effects of physical attractiveness. Find 5-10 good references. Obtain the original works and save them on paper or in electronic format. Prepare an APA-Style Reference List.

shing
Download Presentation

Conducting a Search of the Literature

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Conducting a Search of the Literature Your First Writing Assignment

  2. Your First Assignment • Search the literature on effects of physical attractiveness. • Find 5-10 good references. • Obtain the original works and save them on paper or in electronic format. • Prepare an APA-Style Reference List. • Due at 1 PM on Friday the 20th of May. • For more details, go here.

  3. Outline of a Literature Search • Read Chapter 6 in Martin. • Pose your question in plain English. • “What are the psychological effects of a person’s being physically attractive?” • Go to PsychInfo • Click on the video icon there for an introduction to PsychInfo. • Click on PsychInfo to enter.

  4. PsychInfo Thesaurus

  5. Click on Term “Physical Attractiveness”

  6. “Physical Appearance”

  7. Narrowing the Search • The thesaurus gives you key words to use, later, in your search. • It may also help you narrow your search. • For example, • Effect of Clothing • Effect of Facial Features • Such narrowing of topic is often necessary.

  8. New Search, Physical Attractiveness

  9. Assorted Tips • Searching for physical attractiveness targets any article with both the word physical and the word attractiveness. • This is identical to searching for physical and attractiveness. • Wild cards can be used – for example, attract* would target attractiveness, attraction, and so on. • Searching for “physical attractiveness” would target only pages with that exact phrase. I got 3,371 results.

  10. Too Many Results • 3,371 results ! Hmm, may need to narrow the search, eh? • Cursor over the magnifying glass, see the abstract. • Click the title to see more details. • Click “Find It” or “PDF Full Text” to obtain the full text of the article. • Very cool.

  11. Find a Review Article

  12. Wow ! • We hit pay dirt here, 203 review articles. • Review articles can lead to many more good references • And help you relate your topic to current and past theories.

  13. Add to Folder • You can add references to a folder by simply clicking on “Add to folder.” • Later you can apply an action to all of the references you have added to that folder. • Click on “Go to Folder View” to display the contents of the folder. • On the next slide, a folder with five references.

  14. Select Items, Email

  15. Relate Two Constructs • Your research is almost certainly going to involve the relationship between two or more constructs. • Search for articles that include one AND another TOPIC. • Try “Physical Attractiveness” and “Social Desirability.” • Try Physical Attractiveness and “Impression Formation.”

  16. Play With It • You cannot break it. • Play with it, you will learn lots of useful little tricks.

  17. Use Others’ Reference Lists • Find a few recent articles on your topic of interest. • Look at the reference lists in these articles. • These lists should lead you to previously published articles on your topic. • This works best with review articles.

  18. Do a Citation Search • Find an older article that is cited by almost everybody publishing on your topic. • Search for all the articles that have cited that popular article. • See my online lesson on Conducting a Citation Search.

  19. Prepare the APA-Style Reference List • See my Sample Papers . • See the APA’s Sample Paper . • See my Links to APA Style Resources . • Avoid these Common Errors . • The assignment is due at 1 PM on Friday the 20th of May

More Related