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Psychology Research: Find Articles

Research Guide for Psychology at PLNU

Ryan Library Psychology Databases

Ryan Library Databases are subscriptions provided to the PLNU community for online access to journal and magazine articles and/or citations.

Recommended databases for psychology are:

  • PsycINFO - scholarly journal articles, from 1887 to the present, some links to full text

  • PsycARTICLES - 78 highly cited journals, all full text

Additional resources for psychology are:

  • MEDLINE - full-text access to over 1,450 scholarly journals

  • ScienceDirect - selected full-text scholarly journal articles 

  • Wiley Online - full-text scholarly journal articles in several disciplines

  • MORE databases with psychology-related information

Database Search Strategies

Google Scholar

Search the scholarly web for psychology information resources.

Google Scholar Search

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary Sources serve as a record of first-hand experience, including the collection and analysis of data. Just like diaries share an author's personal life, research articles describe the author's own studies or other work. 

Secondary Sources report, describe, or analyze someone else's original work without conducting additional data collection or analysis of new information. Books and articles that present overviews or summaries of previous research are usually secondary sources.

The Basics of Scholarly Research

Um... could you remind me about scholarly sources?

  1. Empirical studies require actual and objective observation or experimentation.
  2. Articles that describe empirical studies are published in academic journals or research monographs.
  3. Many of these publications are peer-reviewed, meaning that experts screened each chapter or article prior to publication.

Scholarly research articles usually have 5 main sections plus a list of references:

  • Abstract/Introduction
  • Review of the literature
  • Methodology
  • Results
  • Discussion and/or conclusion

How Can I Find the Full Article?

Use these 3 options to locate a complete article when all you have is a citation:

  1. Link out to PLNU's Journals Directory from your list of search results in one of our databases.

  2. Go straight to the Journals Directory to see if articles from the journal you need are included in any of our 80+ databases.

  3. Use your favorite search engine to explore the open web by looking for the article title (use quotation marks around the title to improve your results)

Can't seem to track it down?

Use PLNU's Interlibrary Loan (ILL) request service. We'll find another library that has what you need, and we'll send the article right to you!

Click Here for ILL Request Form