Psychology Research paper

Hi everyone:

I thought it might be helpful for me to address the distinctions between scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles and other source material as you begin your research for the assigned research article for the course. As a reminder, instructions for the Research Paper for the course are found within Blackboard by clicking on the link for “Reaction and Research Papers…” in the left hand column of the course home screen. Scroll down after clicking on this link, fully read the instructions for this assignment, and then click on the title “Instructions of Research Paper (Graded) and for Research Paper Discussion Forum Submissions” to locate the submission link for your paper.

Scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles are those articles published in peer-reviewed journals that address a particular field of study (e.g., psychology) and involve quantitative and / or qualitative research findings. The articles are referred to as “peer-reviewed” because, before they are accepted for publication, researchers who do similar research in the discipline review the articles to ensure that they seem to follow sound theory and research methodology.

Articles obtained from the Internet are generally posted by a single individual or organization and are not peer-reviewed. Additionally, books are generally not considered peer-reviewed.

One way in which you can locate peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles as you respond to course-related requirements is to access articles from the MDC Library through the PsycArticle database. You can access the MDC library from your home and obtain full text, scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles through this link. Most articles within this database are peer-reviewed, and the journals within this database are published by the American Psychological Association. To access an article through PsycArticles via the MDC library:

1. From mdc.edu, click on “Libraries” in the left-hand column

2. Be sure that you are on the “Libraries” tab of this screen, and click on the blue hyperlink “More databases” by the words “Find Articles –“

3. Log in to the MDC library:

   1. Enter your borrower ID - Your Borrower ID is your MDC Student ID

   2. Enter your Pin / Password – Your Pin / Password is the last four digits of your MDC Student ID

   3. Click Login

4. Use the scroll bar on the right of the screen to scroll down to “PsycArticles (EBSCO) and click on this blue hyperlink

5. Before searching this database for articles, be sure to use the scroll bar on the right side of this screen and scroll down and click the boxes under:

   1. Full text

   2. Exclude book reviews

   3. Exclude non-article content

6. Then, scroll back to the top of the screen and enter a keyword phrase (e.g., REM sleep) and click “Search”

7. Scroll down to view the search results, to read the articles, to print / save the articles