The journey to the begining

Overview to conduct research and other demons

Esteban Montenegro-Montenegro, PhD

Psychology and Child Development

Aims in this lecture

  • To give an overview of the next steps.

  • Highlight the importance of finding reliable scientific resources.

  • Keywords to start searching for articles.

  • Literature review and how to make it work.

Let’s start with a big picture

PSYC4310researchProject

How do we start searching research ideas ?

  • Where should I start to get better research ideas?
    • The answer is always to read more and more!
    • Where are we going to read and find information?
  • We will read always SCIENTIFIC articles, keep reading this lecture to know more!

Tip

Somebody once said: Good ideas are many times the product of the lack of reading.

It is a meme where Sponge Bob looks fancy. At the top the picture says "Scientific Articles", at the bottom it says "Fancy indeed"

Where are the scientific articles located?

  • Many sources on Internet will claim that they provide scientific content. However, not all the content is a good fit for this course.

  • For instance, we can check the website Psychology Today. This website has many articles related to diverse topics in psychology, and many times the authors review scientific articles and translate them into a more digestible narrative. For example, in the article titled “Why It’s Hard to Break Up with a Bad Boyfriend or Girlfriend” the author presents scientific terms such as variable ratio reinforcement schedule.

  • Is this article a scientific article? How can we know? Let me dissect this creature in the next slide.

Non-scientific article’s anatomy

Don’t use this type of source in this course

  • The title is written to be a “click-bait”. This means, it was meant to be catchy and easy to click on.

  • There is not an abstract.

  • The article does not have a methods section, results, and discussion.

  • The review process is not double-blinded (I’ll explain later)

  • The pictures are just decorative, they don’t provide information.

  • The narrative in this article tries to be fun to read.

  • It is too brief and takes information from many sources without citations.

Let’s revise a scientific article

  • We can check the article: “Long-term effects of COVID-19 on mental health: A systematic review” as a good example of scientific article.

  • This article shows the following elements:

  • The name of the scientific journal (Journal of Effective Disorders).

  • The layout has Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.

  • The journal was published by a scientific publisher, in this case; Elsevier.

  • Not, all scientific journals are published by a publisher. The journal might be published by private or public universities.
  • The authors included citations, references, and abstract.
  • The figures and tables are meaningful to understand the information.
  • The title is not a click-bait.

Scientific lifecycle

How a scientific article is born?

Untitled Diagram

How a scientific article is born? (2)

  • The key element in scientific publishing is the peer review step.

  • In scientific journals, the scientist who submits an article for publication MUST not know who is the reviewer or reviewers. At the same time, the reviewers MUST not know who is or who are the authors of the article under review.

  • We call this a double-blinded review system. But, as you might imagine this system has been criticized, see this publication, and more in this article.

Where can I download scientific articles?

  • You could use Google scholar. But not all the articles are free to download. But, at least you could get the reference from there and after that, you can go to the CSU Stan library website.

  • On the CSU Stan library website you’ll find a search bar where you can fetch scientific articles, and download the articles in pdf format.

Generate Keywords

  • It is common that at the beginning of a research project you don’t know specific keywords. That’s OK.

  • You can start with a broad idea. For instance, if you are interested in romantic relationships. You can say to yourself:

    • My first keywords are: “romantic relationships”
    • But, when? When people are teenagers, adults, or aging adults? heterosexual or gay relationships?
    • You may pick teenagers, now you have an additional keyword.
    • You may also pick heterosexual relationships.
    • You can try: romantic relationships, teenagers, adolescence, heterosexual.

  • In your first wide search you may find other possible words such as: sexual roles, stereotypes, aggression. or misconceptions in romantic relationships. These words can also be added to your search.

Tip

When you are looking for keywords you are in an early exploration stage. You need to read and write down the keywords that are more frequent in your search.

Generate Keywords (2)

  • Your keywords will be more specific once you define what is your research question.

  • In my example, thanks to my keywords I could formulate the question: What is the influence of sexual stereotypes in romantic relationships in teenagers?

  • It is still a very big question, but it will get refine when you read more. You may find a specific theory that addresses this issue, then you’ll start using the theory’s name as your main keyword or set of keywords.

  • For example, if you study romantic relationship you may come across attachment theory. Then, attachment theory will become a more specific set of keywords.

Important

The main objective is to find more specific keywords. If after a while you cannot find more specific keywords you are not reading enough or you are looking at the wrong information.

Start your literature review

Literature review, what is it?

  • Literature reviews sound boring, I know. But, this stage is crucial to select a topic you liked.

  • Research is not boring if you select something you enjoy reading. The literature review will help you to find a fun topic for you.

  • After knowing your keywords, you can start reviewing articles.

  • You may create small summaries for each article where you extract the information that you need to prepare a narrative related to the state of art in your topic.

Literature review, what is it? (2)

  • In the literature review phase, you will find different types of research articles:
flowchart LR
    338574["Articles"] --- 497165["Empirical"]
    338574 --- 407950["Reviews"]
    497165 --- 525687["Experiments"]
    497165 --- 226158["Non-experiments"]
    497165 --- 362031["Psychometrics/Methods"]
    226158 --- 275202["Qualitative "]
    226158 --- 586082["Quantitative "]
    275202 --- 359947["Interviews"]
    275202 --- 648543["Focus groups"]
    275202 --- 929715["Case Studies"]
    275202 --- 727734["Ethnographies"]
    275202 --- 730820["Content Analysis"]
    275202 --- 229817["Observations"]

References