For the in-class assignment, you will use a paper you have already read in the class, and that you found especially interesting, as a stepping stone to find two other articles. Ask any questions you might have.

After the class you will then do an exercise that is pretty much the same as the in-class exercise, with some differences. See next page of the guide titled "Assignment".

Step 1

Open PsycINFO:

Using keywords or phrases that relate to the the article you read, create a search that draws on the basic techniques we talked about in class:

• Logical operators (AND, OR). Examples: cognitive and psychology; memory or mnemonic.
• Phrase searching. Use quotation marks to search for a phrase. Example: “health psychology”.
• Truncation. Example: psychol* 
• Nesting of search expressions using parentheses: (memor* or mnemonic) and "cognitive psychology". This will tell the system to process the "or" expression in the parentheses first, and then "and" in those results with a phrase search on cognitive psychology.

After running your search, look for "Source Types" to the left of the search results and select "Academic Journals":

Step 2

Now look over the results and refine your search. For example, look over the search results to see if their titles or abstracts or subject terms suggest new keywords to tweak your search. (There are techniques for searching on the subject terms, but for this exercise just treat them as keywords like the other keywords you have used in the first step.)

Also, try out the "filters" that appear to the left of the search results. You already used one above when you limited to academic journals. Here are examples:

The methodology of an article is important, so try that option. For the definitions of the types of "methodology" an article can have, see the box at the bottom of this page.

In your search results, try to find an article that is a review article. To do so, when you look in methodology, limit to one of these two options: Literature Review or Systematic Review. 

If you cannot find a review article, select one article that looks interesting to you before moving on to Step 3.

Step 3

Can you access the full text of the article through Lehigh Links or from a link in the database, or do need to order it via ILLiad through Lehigh Links? (No need to order it for the assignment.) ILLiad is an interlibrary loan service. 

Step 4

Use APA style to create a reference to the article you found. To do so, when you are in the PsycINFO record for the item you want to reference, click on "cite" on the right, then look for the APA version of the citation; here's an example:

Note:  "citation generator" tools like the one immediately above can produce inaccuracies. No need to do it for this assignment, but for future reference note that you can check the references for accuracy by going to the "Owl" style guide or another guide for APA style, such as the ones in the Citing Sources page of this guide.  Also, for in-text citations, which point to the full citation at the end of a paper, see the citing sources page of this guide.

Step 5

Finally, did other article(s) cite the article you cited in APA format?  Articles cite each other because they are related somehow in topic. So finding one good article can be a stepping stone to finding another related second article. 

Here's an example of an article that has been cited by 24 other items: