Читать книгу Methods in Psychological Research - Annabel Ness Evans - Страница 71

When searching for information on anything today, where is the first place people look? Google, of course—it has all the answers, right? Well, it certainly has answers, but many of those may have no basis in scientific evidence. However, within Google is Google Scholar, which does search scientific journals, books, and professional associations’ websites. Certainly, Google Scholar can be a great way to start a literature search; for a more versatile and thorough search of the psychology literature, there are a number of bibliographic databases, including Scopus, ProQuest, ERIC, and PsycINFO. We prefer PsycINFO, an index that is produced by the American Psychological Association and is probably the most widely used bibliographic search engine for English-language journals (http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycinfo/index.aspx).

What is the psychology literature? When we use this term, we are usually referring to original research published in peer-reviewed journals. These journal articles can be easily recognized by their common layout. They begin with an abstract (a short summary) and include an introduction, a method section, a results section, and a discussion. But the literature also includes review articles, books, chapters in books, edited volumes, and chapters in edited volumes. These sources are not usually where original research is published. Rather, they usually provide a summary of a collection of research studies in a particular area. Although these sources can be useful in helping you put the research in context, it is better to read the original research and draw your own conclusions.

Not included in the preceding list are newspapers, magazines (including Psychology Today), and websites. There are two reasons why scientific research is not published in these media: (1) the presence of advertising and (2) the lack of peer review. Let’s talk about advertising. Newspapers and magazines contain a lot of advertising of products and services. Indeed, these publications would not be viable without advertisers. Editors of newspapers and magazines must keep their advertisers happy; therefore, we, as consumers of the information in these publications, cannot be confident that reporting will be unbiased. Now, we are not saying that all newspaper and magazine reports are biased, but they could be. For example, imagine you have conducted a study that shows that drinking Brand X beer can lead to spontaneous, uncontrollable hiccupping. You send your report to a magazine that has Brand X beer as a major advertiser. It’s pretty unlikely that the magazine editor will accept your paper for publication. Yes, your research might be terrific, but the potential damage to the advertiser in terms of sales of the product might lead the editor to reject your study for publication. This is why you will not see advertising in journals. Journal editors, by not permitting advertising, avoid the conflict of interest problem that advertising brings.

The second reason why original scientific research is not usually published in newspapers or magazines is that neither of these sources requires review of the research by expert peers. Some sources that you can search are peer reviewed, and some are not. It is important to understand the peer review process because it is a fundamental safeguard of quality in research. As the name implies, peer review is a process whereby the editor of a journal sends submitted manuscripts out to be reviewed by other researchers in the same field of study. The manuscript is read and critiqued by peers who have expertise in the area. The review is usually blind; this means that the name of the author of the manuscript is removed from the manuscript before the copies are sent to the peer reviewers. Blind review also means that the editor does not reveal the reviewers’ names to the author of the manuscript. Blind review helps guard against any personal conflicts that may be present among researchers and facilitates a fair review of the research. The editor receives the reviews and decides whether the paper should be accepted as submitted, accepted with minor changes, accepted with revisions, or not accepted at all. If the manuscript is accepted but changes are required, the author is given the opportunity to make the changes necessary to satisfy the editor and to address the concerns of the reviewers. If the study has major flaws, it may have to be redone and resubmitted (of course, the researchers can submit the manuscript to another journal and hope for a more positive review).

Peer review helps maintain a high standard of quality in research. Without peer review, shoddy or even fraudulent research might be published that could send other researchers off on a wild-goose chase that could last for years. Keep in mind that books and magazines (e.g., Psychology Today) are usually not peer reviewed.

Note: In our courses, we do not permit the use of Psychology Today as a source. Students often question this because a lot of psychological research is reported in Psychology Today. Along with the advertising and peer review issues, which we discussed previously, there are two other reasons for our decision to not permit this magazine as a source for student papers. One reason is simple—we do not want our students to use secondary sources of any kind. Second, the writers for Psychology Today are not scientists; they may have some academic background in the area, but they are writing for the magazine as reporters. Psychology Today, like any other magazine, needs to sell magazines. Articles written by reporters will not be published unless the editor believes that the report will help sales.

FYI

There are two notable exceptions to the “no ads in journals” rule. Ironically, the two most prestigious scientific journals worldwide are full of advertisements. Science and Nature are peer reviewed, highly respected, and widely circulated.

Table 2.1 summarizes some of the differences between scientific and popular literature.

Table 2.1

When you are ready to use a bibliographic database, your first step is to select the appropriate search terms. Often students will complain that they cannot find anything in the literature on a particular topic, even though a lot of research is there. Usually, the problem is that they have not used the correct terms when doing the search. Using the correct terms is crucial; fortunately, the databases have a thesaurus of keywords to help you.

Imagine that you want to find articles on treating seasonal affective disorder (SAD) with light therapy. You can go directly to the thesaurus in PsycINFO and look for seasonal affective disorder. You will find that the term is used in the database; you will see a brief definition of SAD and the information that the term was introduced in 1991. PsycINFO also provides broader terms that would include SAD and narrower terms that are relevant. One of the narrower terms is phototherapy. That sounds useful.You can select “phototherapy” by clicking on the box, and you can similarly select “seasonal affective disorder.” The default is to connect these two phrases with “or,” but if you want articles that contain both phrases, you should choose the “and” option. When you click “and” and search (DE “Seasonal Affective Disorder”) and (DE “Phototherapy”) you will find 605 publications with those keywords. You might want to limit your search to only peer-reviewed articles in English by clicking “refine search” and selecting “peer-reviewed journals” under “publication type.” Below that is a box for selecting “language,” namely, “English.” If you select this and search again, you will get 498 hits. Wow, that’s too many articles, so you decide to add another variable, sex differences. Now the search results in only 17 hits—that’s a more manageable number. Now you can click on each one and read the abstract of the article.The abstract is a short but comprehensive summary of the article, and based on your perusal of the abstracts, you can decide which articles you want to read in their entirety. If you have done the search the way we have described, you would find an article titled “The Duration of Light Treatment and Therapy Outcome in Seasonal Affective Disorder.” This might be the one you choose to read. If your library has access to the full-text electronic version of the article, you will be able to download it immediately. If your library does not have access, you will have to request a copy, called a reprint. You can also write to the principal investigator and request a reprint. Sometimes you’ll be given electronic access to the article, but this is not guaranteed, so you should begin your literature search early. If you leave reprint requests until the last minute, you may not be able to get the articles that are most relevant to your research topic.

Here is another example. Suppose we are interested in how the color of a room might influence mood. A search using the terms mood and color produces 819 hits. Now, let’s refine (limit) the search to just peer-reviewed articles in English. Wow, still 685 articles—that’s more than we want. Perhaps color is too broad, so we try room color instead. A search with mood and room color gives only 10 articles. The third article in the list looks interesting: “Effects of Colour of Light on Nonvisual Psychological Processes,” by Igor Knez at the University of Gävle, Sweden. Again, your library may or may not have access to the full text of the article. Be sure to consult with your reference librarians. These people are well educated and typically underutilized by students. If you have a question, ask your librarian.

Once you have located an article, you can conduct a backward and forward citation search. A backward citation search is when you examine the references that have been cited in the article (termed “Cited References” in PsycINFO). If you find a relatively recent study, it’s likely that the authors conducted a thorough search when they wrote their article, so this can be very useful for your search. Another valuable strategy is to identify all the studies that have cited a particular article. This is called a forward citation search (termed “Times Cited in this Database” in PsycINFO). Using a forward search may show you where the research literature has gone since the publication of an article. Indeed, the impact of a study can be measured by how many times it has been cited in the literature.