Library Guides: PSYC 210: Experimental Research Methods and Laboratory: 1. Identifying a Topic

Identifying a Topic

Take time to find a topic that you will find really interesting!

Here are some resources you can use to find a topic.

Start by looking at the table of contents of some recent issues of Psychological Science to get ideas for your topic.Then look around in some of the other resources below.

Psychological Science
Excellent place to locate empirical studies.
"Psychological Science (PSS), the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology, is a peer-reviewed monthly journal with cutting-edge research articles, short reports, and research reports spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology. Psychological Science is the source for the latest findings in cognitive, social, developmental, and health psychology, as well as behavioral neuroscience and biopsychology." (from journal website)
Current directions in psychological science
"Current Directions in Psychological Science publishes reviews by leading experts covering all of scientific psychology and its applications. Each issue of Current Directions features a diverse mix of reports on various topics such as language, memory and cognition, development, the neural basis of behavior and emotions, various aspects of psychopathology, and theory of mind. These articles allow readers to stay apprised of important developments across subfields beyond their areas of expertise and bodies of research they might not otherwise be aware of. The articles in Current Directions are also written to be accessible to non-experts, making them ideally suited for use in the classroom as teaching supplements."
Above description is from http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal201963/title
Annual Reviews

This database enables you to search over a wide range of "Annual Reviews" journals. Some examples

Annual Review of Psychology
Annual Review of Neuroscience
Annual Review of Annual review of law and social science
Annual Review of Clinical Psychology

Run a search on a topic that you find of interest. The search results are "review articles". This type of journal article gives you an overview of a topic and can help you locate literature about it. Sometimes when you do a search, you will see older articles near the top of the list of articles. You can find more recent articles by sorting by most recent articles.

Find a popular newspaper or magazine article
One way to locate a topic is to look at newspaper or magazine accounts of late-breaking research about psychological topics, and then try to find the scholarly article(s) they reference. Click on this link for places to search.

Lehigh University Libraries - Library Guides

PSYC 210: Experimental Research Methods and Laboratory: 1. Identifying a Topic

Identifying a Topic