primary research article psychology

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Psychology Subject Guide: Primary Original Research Articles

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What is a Primary Original Research Article?

Parts of a primary original research article, searching databases for primary original research articles.

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Are you looking for a primary original research journal article ?

If so, then you need to search for a peer-reviewed or scholarly journal article that:

• reports a research study written by the actual researchers who did the study.
• follows a structured reporting style.

Primary research articles can be identified by a commonly used format or structure. Primary research articles will often contain:

• Title and Author Information - provides the main idea of the article and authors are listed, along with their credentials
• Abstract - provides a summary of the research article. This is useful for quickly determining if the article is relevant to your research.
• Introduction or Literature Review - states the purpose of the research, may provide a summary of other research related to the topic, and may state a hypothesis or research question.
• Methods or Methodology - describes how the research was conducted, with details about who participated in the study, the procedure, what was measured, and how it was measured. Note: A methods section indicates that a study is original research and that the article is a primary source.
• Results - research findings are presented with results displayed using tables, charts, or figures along with a written explanation. Note: A results section  usually indicates that a study is original research and that the article is a primary source.
• Discussion or Conclusion - explains how the results answered the research question and may suggest future areas for research.
• References, Bibliography or Works Cited - lists the publications that the authors cited in the article.
• Parts of a Primary Research Article

Primary original research studies are available in many of the Library's databases, but you may want to consider searching databases in your subject area .

Most databases do not allow you to limit your search to primary original research only - you will need to search for peer-reviewed or scholarly articles on your topic and then look through the search results to find articles that describe primary original research.

Search Tips: Adding Keywords to Your Search

Adding certain keywords to your search may improve your chances of finding primary original research articles:

• results and method*
• pet therapy and results and method*
• teens and marijuana and experiment
• children and television and study
• domestic violence and empirical
• research and developmental college students

Search Tips: CTRL+F or Command+F

Control + F (PC) or Command + F (Mac), is a keyboard shortcut for the Find command.

If you're in a web browser and need to find where a word appears on a web page:

• press Control+F (PC) or Command+F (Mac) to bring up a search box;
• type in the word method & the web page will show where that term first appears on the web page - you may need to use the search box's next arrow to see additional uses of the word method on the web page.
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Primary Sources in Psychology

Primary sources in psychology are empirical (report research through observable testing), often published in journals, and usually include standardized sections (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, References).

Finding Journal Articles

Databases contain an index to journals and articles that you can search to identify articles on your topic. Some databases link to the full text of journal articles. If the full text is not available from the database, check the  library Citation Linker  to see if Reed has access to the article. If the article you are looking for is not available at Reed, you can request it through interlibrary loan .

Psychology Database Best Bets

A collection of behavioral and social science research, dissertations, and scholarly literature abstracts that offers a broad view of the field of Psychology but is also relevant to related disciplines. Includes some full text.

Additional Databases

Preprints and grey literature.

Pre-prints and grey literature have not been formally published through a peer-review process, but may still report on an empirical study. New research may appear in these spaces before formal publication.

• CogPrints An electronic archive for self-archiving papers in any area of psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics, and many areas of computer science.
• PsyArXiv PsyArXiv (psychology archive) is designed to facilitate rapid dissemination of psychological research by allowing scholars to post working papers, unpublished work, and articles under review (preprints). PsyArXiv is a creation of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) and the Center for Open Science (COS).
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• Last Updated: Jun 11, 2024 5:08 PM
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PSY 290 - Research Methods in Psychology

• Recommended Resources
• Primary and Secondary sources in Psychology
• Locating primary sources

What is considered a primary source in psychology?

Primary sources are original research articles (empirical research), meaning that they are written by the researchers who conducted the research.  They are most often written once the research is complete or near completion. 

• Are often written by professionals in the field or a related discipline.
• Many original research articles found in peer-reviewed journals follow a similar format and usually include an introduction, methods section, results, discussion/conclusion, and references.  Look for all of these elements when you are looking for primary sources. 

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines empirical as:

• "derived from or denoting experimentation or systematic observations as the basis for conclusion or determination, as opposed to speculative, theoretical, or exclusively reason-based approaches."

What is considered a secondary source in psychology?

• Secondary sources in psychology include articles that summarize or provide interpretations of original research.
• Secondary sources can be articles or books. 
• Review articles are also considered a secondary source.
• Secondary sources can often be easier to read. 
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• Last Updated: Jul 11, 2024 1:00 PM
• URL: https://libraryguides.nau.edu/PSY290

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Q. How do I find an empirical, primary research article for my psychology topic?

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Answered By: Robert Miller Last Updated: Feb 08, 2024     Views: 154

Here is a guide that will help you search for and identify an empirical, primary research article in psychology:

PSYCHOLOGY: FINDING EXPERIMENTAL (EMPIRICAL) RESEARCH ARTICLES

That guide basically explains that an empirical, primary research article is written by a scientist or scientists, and it describes an experiment they designed and conducted. The article will have a structure like this:

• Introduction

The article will be written in technical language and it will contain lots of cited references.

An empirical, primary research article can be difficult to understand, but by reviewing it carefully, you will be able to pick out some main ideas and facts from the article that you can use in your project.

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Related topics.

Psychology : 85-715: Graduate Research Methods in Psychology: Finding Research Articles

• Finding Research Articles
• Subject Searching in PsycInfo
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Types of Scholarly Information

You will encounter many types of articles and it is important to distinguish between these different categories of scholarly literature.  Keep in mind the following definitions.

PRIMARY RESEARCH ARTICLE :   A primary research article describes an empirical study that aims to gain new knowledge on a topic through direct or indirect observation and research.  These include quantitative or qualitative data and analysis. In science, a primary article will often include the following sections:  Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion.

REVIEW ARTICLE :  In the scientific literature, this is a type of article that provides a synthesis of existing research on a particular topic.  These are useful when you want to get an idea of a body of research that you are not yet familiar with.

PEER-REVIEWED :  Refers to articles that have undergone a rigorous review process by peers in their discipline , often including revisions to the original manuscript, before publication in a scholarly journal. Primary research articles in reputable psychology journals are always peer-reviewed. Reviews are often peer-reviewed as well. 

PREPRINTS:  Preprints are an increasingly common publication type. Preprints have not gone through peer-review and are published on publicly accessible pre-print servers. They serve as a way for authors to get their work out quickly to the public and other researchers. They can go on to be published in scholarly journals with a peer-review process.

Google Scholar Configuration

Make sure that your Google Scholar settings are configured properly so that you are able to access all of the articles CMU Libraries have in their collection! 

Boolean Operators

Getting too many or too few search results? Use Boolean operators to narrow or widen a search. For example, Dog AND Cat will narrow your search to only include results that include both of those words. The OR operator will broaden your search. The NOT operator can sometimes filter out too many articles so use it cautiously.

How to Find Research Articles

Research databases.

Research databases are key to conducting comprehensive or specific searches of the scholarly literature across many different publishers and journals. They include special tools and filters to help you narrow and expand your search. Many databases, such as Web of Science, have more advanced search tools than Google Scholar and will allow one to more efficiently find the literature that they are looking for. 

• PsycINFO :  American Psychological Association's renowned resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, it is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. 

Go to the library homepage and click on Databases, eResources, & Tools . This will take you to a list of databases that you can access as a CMU affiliate.

Search Tips for Finding Relevant Articles

START WITH A REVIEW ARTICLE . Review articles are excellent resources for finding a lot of primary research articles on a given topic. For example, if I'm interested in the development of visual cortical neurons, I could start my search by reading a recent review article on that topic and then look at the references section of the paper to find primary research articles.

FIND ONE OR A FEW RELEVANT PRIMARY RESEARCH ARTICLES . Having even a single relevant article of interest can be very useful in performing a literature search. You can look at the References section of that paper to find older related articles or look at the Cited References linked under articles in PsycINFO. But how do you find more recent articles that have used and cited the article of interest in their work? You can find all of the more recent articles that have cited your article of interest by clicking on the Times Cited in this Database link below the article.  This is a great way to understand how your article of interest has built on prior research and how it has influenced more recent research.  

• Hint 1 : Some articles in PsycINFO do not have these links but you can filter for them by selecting on the References Available box in the Refine Results panel on the left.
• Hint 2 : You can put the title of any article in Google Scholar to easily get to the Times Cited information.

Therefore, by finding a single relevant paper, we can easily find many more relevant articles by looking at the citation tracing links. Together, all of these articles will help us understand how this article   has contributed to the collective body of knowledge on this topic.

Using the APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms

This thesaurus is an example of a controlled vocabulary. A controlled vocabulary is a list of standardized terms used by catalogers and database indexers to describe what an article or book is about. APA staff manually tag each article with a handful of index terms. This allows for very precise and comprehensive searching. The word "depression" for example has many synonyms that you might miss with a simple keyword search, but if you search with the index term of depression, you will be able to find every article on that topic, whether the article uses the word "depression," "melancholia," or "sadness" for example. The major concepts contain many narrower concepts. Check the Explode box to include the narrower concepts in your search. Here we are adding the concepts of "major depression" and "bullying".

Forward Citation Tracing in Google Scholar

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• Last Updated: Sep 23, 2024 2:52 PM
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