PsycARTICLES Tips - Quantitative Research Methods - PSYC/SOCI 225 Research Guide

About The Database

PsycARTICLES® from the American Psychological Association (APA), is a definitive source of full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology. It contains more than 163,000 articles from more than 80 journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA), its imprint the Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF), and from allied organizations including the Canadian Psychological Association and the Hogrefe Publishing Group. It includes all journal articles, book reviews, letters to the editor, and errata from each journal. Coverage spans 1894 to present; nearly all APA journals go back to Volume 1, Issue 1. PsycARTICLES is indexed with controlled vocabulary from APA's Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®.

PsycARTICLES
PsycARTICLES, from the American Psychological Association (APA), is a source of full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in psychology. The database contains full-text peer-reviewed articles published by the American Psychological Association and affiliated journals.

American Psychological Association
This site has a lot of helpful information on using PsycARTICLES.

How To Search

Use the advanced search option.
Enter your search term in the search boxes.
Select a field from the drop down box if you want to narrow your search.
Browse through the search options and select full text, scholarly (peer reviewed) journals. There are other limiters you can select. Under Methodology, you can select Quantitative Study. See the box below for the description of each methodology.
Check the box to exclude Book Reviews if you want articles only.
For more details on each limiter, select Help at the top right of the screen. At the bottom of the list on the right is information specific to PsycARTICLES.

Publication Status

First Posting Records- APA
First posting records have been available in APA databases since 2009, and they are different from other records in a few ways. In order to make them available as quickly as possible, they are machine indexed, and not all fields are populated as in a standard PsycINFO record. For example, first posting records have no page numbers or index terms, neither are the tests and measures, grants, or methodology fields populated. Thus, searching for these earliest records requires a somewhat different technique from keyword or index term searching.
The fields that are available in a first posting record include titles, abstracts, and the first posting publication information. In addition, the records are categorized by classification code, APA's coding system for indexing the document according to the primary subject matter. A researcher can search whole subcategories of data by using APA's classification codes.
The Peer Review Process for APA Authors
A key convention in the publication of research is the peer review process, in which the quality and potential contribution of each manuscript is evaluated by one's peers in the scientific community.
Like other scientific journals, APA journals routinely utilize a peer review process to guide manuscript selection and publication decisions. Toward the goal of impartiality, the majority of APA journals follow an established masked review policy, in which authors' and reviewers' identities are concealed from each other.

Methodology

Captures the research method used in a study, such as Clinical Case Study, Empirical Study, Experimental Replication, Follow up Study, Longitudinal Study, Prospective Study, retrospective Study, Field Study, Literature Review, Systematic Review, Mathematical Model, Meta Analysis, Non-clinical Case Study, Qualitative Study, Quantitative Study, Treatment Outcome/ Clinical Trial.

Empirical Study: Study based on facts, systematic observation, or experiment, rather than theory or general philosophical principle.

Clinical Case Study: Case reports that include disorder, diagnosis, and clinical treatment for mental or medical illnesses of individuals.

Non-clinical Case Study: Document consisting of non-clinical or organizational case examples of the concepts being researched or studied. The setting is always non-clinical and does not include treatment-related environments.

Treatment Outcome/Clinical Trial: Empirical evaluations undertaken to assess the results or consequences of treatment and procedures used in combating disease in order to determine the efficacy, effectiveness, safety, and practicability of these interventions. In clinical trials, at least one test treatment and one control treatment is used to study the safety and/or efficacy of new diagnostic, therapeutic, or pharmacology protocols. Participants are assigned by chance to separate groups that compare different treatments; neither the researchers nor the participants can choose which group. Used only for human populations.

Experimental Replication: Replication of the methods or results of a previous study, as indicated by the author. Studies that include extensions to original research are not considered replications.

Follow-up Study: Empirical study which re-examines studies of individuals or groups, comparing the present findings with the original observations or measurements in a previously conducted study.

Longitudinal Study: A study that follows the same individuals or groups of subjects over an extended period of time.

Prospective Study: Longitudinal study that looks at present data and includes ongoing data gathering in its methodology To generate prognostic or evidence rates.

Retrospective Study: Longitudinal research that examines past experiences or events to study causative factors related to disease or behavior.

Literature Review: Survey of previously published literature on a particular topic to define and clarify a particular problem; summarize previous investigations; and to identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature, and suggest the next step in solving the problem.

Systematic Review: A form of literature review that comprehensively identifies, appraises, and synthesizes all relevant literature to address a specific question.

Meta Analysis: Statistical analysis of previously published empirical data.

Mathematical Model: A mathematical structure, formula, or equation that can be used to describe and study a real situation. This type of methodology is commonly found in, but not limited to, studies of epidemiology, neural networks, artificial intelligence, robotics, human factors, utility theory, and statistics.

Field Study: Research undertaken outside the laboratory or place of learning ("in the field"), usually in a natural environment, including free-living wild animals in their natural habitat or research on humans using naturalistic observation techniques.

Qualitative Study: A type of research methodology that produces descriptive data, with little emphasis given to numerical quantitative measures. Examples include unstructured interviews, participant observations, and focus groups.

Quantitative Study: Study that provides numerical representation of observations for the purpose of describing and explaining the phenomenon studied followed by the application of various descriptive and inferential statistical methods.

Scientific Simulation: Examine issues in a controlled scientific simulation environment.

Brain Imaging: The use of imaging tools such as magnetic Resonance Imaging, Computed Tomography, Positron Emission Tomography or Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to study brain anatomy and its involvement in newurological and cognitive functions

Interview: Agoal-directed conversation with the obtaining information from an individual

Focus Group: Qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their opinions, perceptions, or experiences on issues, products, or services

Twin Studies: Compare the etiology of genetic and environmental traits of identical and fraternal twins