Skip to Main Content

PSY 356 Research Methods for Psychology: Psychology Articles

Publication Process

Popular Press: Material written for the general public.

Scholarly Journal: Articles written by experts in academic or professional fields.

Peer-Reviwed: Articles are submitted to rigorous scrutiny by other subject experts prior to publication.

Article Types

Empirical Article: Research articles describe and document research conducted by the author(s). Empirical studies are based on data derived from observation or experimentation. Research articles usually comprise an abstract, introduction, methodology, results, discussion, list of references and appendices.

Literature Review: An article in which the authors present the findings of other scholars studies. A literature review identifies major scholars and studies in a particular research area, summarizes current findings and provides a robust bibliography.

Here's a refresher of what you learned in class about the difference between empirical and literature review articles.

Psychology Databases

Footnote Chasing

Select "Elmhurst User" and Use your enumber and password.

Sometime you want to track down the full-text of an article that you see in reference list of another article.  This research technique is called footnote chasing  or backwards searching. Because the library owns articles electronically and in print, you'll need to use two different tools to track down the full text.

1) To check if we have the full-text electronically, use the "Find an E-journal"  or the "Citation Tracker" tool to see in which database it might be.  

2) If you don't find it in our databases, try searching for the title of the journal in the Bluejay Search to see if we own the print version of it.

3) Finally, if you can't locate the full text in either location, you may want to place an inter-library loan request.

Library Contact Information

Reference Desk
(630) 617-3173

Circulation/ILL
(630) 617-3160