Academic Sources

Locating and Evaluating Scholarly Journal Empirical Studies for Research

This activity is designed to practice your skills in locating empirical research articles that would be useful to you in a research assignment.

The activity requires familiarity with

• The difference between a peer-reviewed, empirical study and other kinds of sources.
• A process for searching library databases like the one here:

Searching for Scholarly Articles Using OneSearch (7 minutes).

https://gavilan.libguides.com/c.php?g=1124447&p=8202524

It is also helpful to review the information on Reading Scholarly Articles here:

https://gavilan.libguides.com/c.php?g=1124447&p=8208096

Especially recommend are the video (How to Read a Scholarly Article), and “Which Article is an Empirical Study?”

Some possible topics you might use for this activity:

 

Activity

1. State topic or research question connected in some way to information from this course:
   
    
2. What are some key terms connected to this topic?
   
    
3. Among these, what are the two most important terms? (a term can be more than one word, e.g., “attention deficit disorder” is a term).
   
    
4. Using OneSearch, do a search using just those two terms, (example,  newborn attachment scan the results for subject terms you think are interesting, would help refine your topic, or would help you better find other sources. Subject terms are listed just after the author and journal information in the record:

In this example source above, “irritability” and “sociability” might be useful terms. Words to describe the target population could be helpful, too (e.g., “infants,” “toddlers.” )

 Write at least four terms you found, looking at the records for at least two different sources.

 

5.  Based on browsing these results, change your original search by replacing your terms and/or adding terms you discovered in the subject terms.

A.  Write your new search here:

B.  How many results did you get?

C.  Are the results related to your topic?

If not, try scanning the results again for subject terms that might better capture your topic in a search, and try searching again.
 

6.  Now locate an empirical study from your results. Make sure the study was published no earlier than 2011.

Copy the APA  citation for the article here:

 

Once you find an empirical research article, answer the following questions:

Read the abstract only.

a) What is the research question/hypothesis(the experiment they’re doing and what they’re trying to find out)?

b) Describe the subjects (the group that is being researched) in the study:
   ---How many people were in the study (sometimes you’ll see something like “n=434” where “n” stands for the number of subjects in the study.

  --What else do you learn about the subjects of the study in the abstract (age?, location? Physical or mental conditions? etc.)


c) What are the main findings (results) from the study? If the main findings of the study are not stated in the abstract (they should be, but aren’t always), turn to the last paragraphs of the discussion and/or conclusion and look for them there.