Psychology 124: Empirical Research Essay

Databases are used to find PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES, statistical information, and other information not found through Internet search engines (i.e. Google, Yahoo). 

The material found within databases is generally more acceptable to use than material found on the web because it comes from professionals working in the field that you are researching. You still need to personally review material to make sure it is appropriate for your topic.

The following link will help you understand the peer review process and the difference between peer reviewed journals and magazines.

Scholarly Journals vs. Popular Magazines

The Library's online databases contain millions of published articles from popular magazines, scholarly journals and news sources. In these databases, you can search for your topic in thousands of magazines at the same time. The following is a list of the library databases that are good resources for scholarly journal articles.  Note: off-campus access to these databases requires that you sign on using your mymsjc user name and password.

• Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection (EBSCO)
  Includes peer-reviewed journals and general periodicals in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, anthropology, etc. Make sure you click on the "Peer reviewed" box when searching this collection for journal articles.
• Academic Search Complete (EBSCO)
  The world’s largest academic multi-disciplinary (not just psychology) database, Academic Search Complete provides coverage spaning virtually every area of academic study and offering information dating as far back as 1975. Make sure you click on the Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals box when searching Academic Search Complete for journal articles.
• EBSCO Collection of Databases
  Expand your search to over 20 EBSCO databases at once. Remember to limit your results to academic journals if needed.
• JSTOR
  This collection contains only scholarly journals from a variety of Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines, including psychology.

You can use the Find Journals option in the library's OneSearch catalog to see if the library has a subscription to a particular journal you want to browse. For example, you could type in the Journal of Personality.

Google Scholar indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. It does not always have access to the full text of the article but it can give you the citation which you may be able to use to find the full article elsewhere, like in one of the library databases.