Introduction
Use the background information resources for broad, contextual information about the topic of your articles--or to help you understand technical terms/jargon in the articles you selected
Resources below are:
Review Articles. These are journal articles that provide a high level view of your topic. Use the review articles to learn more about current work on a field or to identify good bibliography related to your topic.
Electronic reference resources help you search for meaning of terms or background information.
ASA. Search ASA for books, including print books owned by Lehigh or ebooks, which you can search for specific concepts.
WorldCat.. WorldCat is a resource that enables you to search for books that Lehigh may not own.
Using Google See this if you want to discover websites using more focused searching
Evaluating Web Resources See this for criteria that will help you evaluate the reliability of websites.
Review Articles
Review articles are a good source of background information about a field. They give a bird's eye view of a field or niche within a field. They can contain valuable bibliography. The titles of these articles often have a slightly higher level or "generic" quality than the titles of articles reporting very specific research findings.
To find review articles, you can do the following.
1. In PsycINFO, limit your search to one of the following two options, "literature review" or "systematic review", which appear in the "methodology" section:
| Literature Review | Survey of previously published literature on a particular topic to define and clarify a particular problem; summarize previous investigations; identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature; and suggest the next step in solving the problem. |
| Systematic Review | A form of literature review that comprehensively identifies, appraises, and synthesizes all relevant research on a specifically formulated question. |
[Above descriptions of reviews are from https://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/training/method-values ]
2. You can limit to review articles in other databases as well, e.g. Web of Science and Medline
3. Search for your topic in the following journals: Current Directions in Psychological Science, and Annual Reviews. NOTE: YOU CAN ALSO SEARCH PSYCINFO FOR REVIEW LITERATURE.
From journal website: "Current Directions in Psychological Science (CDPS) is a peer-reviewed bi-monthly journal featuring reviews by leading experts covering all of scientific psychology and its applications. Current Directions features topics such as language, memory and cognition, development, the neural basis of behavior and emotions, various aspects of psychopathology, and theory of mind. ". Scroll to it in the link provided above.
- Annual Reviews Online This link opens in a new windowSuite of journals in science, engineering, and social sciences publishing only review articles, which provide extensive overviews of current research.
Electronic Reference
- Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new windowOxford Reference includes dictionaries, including authoritative dictionaries for many languages, encyclopedias, and companions, featuring more in-depth but still brief entries, e.g. Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization.
- Access Science This link opens in a new windowOnline encyclopedia and dictionary for the sciences. Includes biographies, images and animations, and videos.
Medline Plus. Source of popular or relatively popular information about medical topics, but check for psychological concepts as well.
Merck Manuals Includes information about diseases as well as a drug look up feature. Check them for psychological topics as well that might have a medical basis.
ASA - The Library Catalog
WorldCat
Using Google
Try using the advanced google search interface.
Regarding Wikipedia, see the Wikipedia article about the Reliability of Wikipedia.
Evaluate what you find on the web....
Evaluating Web Resources
Web resources can be rich sources of information on a topic, but when conducting research, it's important to consider the quality and accuracy of sites you visit on the open web. Use the CRAPP test to determine whether a web resource is trustworthy:
