Research Exercise

This exercise will help you find, summarize, and cite a scholarly article from a library database, to use in your Literature Review.

Exercise

1. Choose a library subject guide that is appropriate to your topic. It will most likely be

• Psychology

but, depending on the topic you have chosen, you may find other guides useful as well, such as:

• Sociology
• Health and Medicine
• Education
• Gerontology
• and so on

2. In the subject guide(s) you have chosen, select one or more library databases in which to search for a full-text scholarly article on your topic. Full-text means that the entire article is available for you to read online.

• The article you select should be scholarly in nature. Scholarly articles typically:
  • are written by professors, researchers, or other experts
  • contain cited references
  • are written in fairly formal, specialized language (the audience is other experts and students, not the general public)
    • the article may be a research study, an experiment performed by the authors, with lots of statistics and containing the following sections:
      • introduction
      • method
      • results
      • discussion
  • scholarly articles are published in academic journals such as Journal of Educational Psychology, International Journal of Play Therapy, etc. (not magazines read by the general public, like Newsweek or Psychology Today)
  • For further help identifying and finding scholarly articles, please see our library guide.
• For database searching help, please see our conference topics:
  • Database Searching Tips and Techniques
  • Locating and Using Library Research Databases

3. When you have found an article that you can use in your research, please post a reply in this conference. Your reply should include:

• What aspect of stress are you researching?
• What database or databases did you search in?
• What search or searches did you use?
• Is the article you have found scholarly? How can you tell?
• Provide a brief summary (4 or 5 sentences) of the article you have found. The summary must be written in your own words and phrases.
  • Within your summary, include an in-text APA citation for the article you have found. For example:
    • Smith and Jones (2008) studied stress reduction in older adults. . . .
• Provide an APA References list citation for the article you've found. Here's a made-up example from a fictional journal:
  • Smith, A. B., & Jones, D. E. (2008). Exercise, meditation, and stress reduction in older adults. Journal of Mental Health and Older Adults, 16(3), 212-228. doi:123/45678.not.real
  • For further help with APA citations, please see our library's page of examples.

Below you will find a sample answer to this exercise. You may post your answer either as an attached Word document, or directly in your WebTycho posting.

This exercise is for exploring and learning: your answers do not have to be perfect, and please ask me any questions you may have.

Thank you very much for your work!