Research in Social Psychology

Surface Web and Deep Web

• Surface web: The region of the World Wide Web that anyone with Internet connect can access for free.
• Deep web: The region of the World Wide Web that requires passwords or subscriptions to access. By some estimates, the deep web is 400 times larger than the surface web. It contains specialized, academic search engines as well as scholarly articles from peer-reviewed academic journals.

Deep Web Search Engines (also know as "databases")

Psychology

• PsycINFO

PsycINFO provides citations, most with abstracts, to journal articles, dissertations, reports, English-language book chapters and books, and other scholarly documents in the field of psychology as well as citations relevant for medicine, education, social work, law, criminology and organizational behaviour.

Finding experimental studies

1. Connect to PsycINFO
2. Enter your search terms (e.g. with the double quotes: "elderly care" "music"). Don't press Search yet
3. In the Methodology box below, click the checkbox for Experimental Study. This will filter the results for only articles having an experimental design
4. Press search

Search tips

Phrase operators: using double quotes

Put a phrase in double qoutes

"social media": will search article records for the whole phrase social media

"online social networks": will search article records for the whole phrase online social networks

Wildcard operator

communi*: searches for words starting with "communi". Will return "community" or "communities"

Boolean operators

"social media" OR "online social networks": Will search for articles with either the phrase "climate change" or "global warming". This is great when you aren't sure which phrase or word might be used.

Proximity operator

mediating NEAR/10 variable: searches for items where mediating and variable are within 10 words of each other

Creating references for your bibliography

1. In the PsycINFO record for an article, look for the "Cite" link in the upper right corner
2. It will generate a APA formatted citation. Treat it like a draft, though. It may have some minor errors

Video tutorials (with transcripts)

• Finding journal article when you only have the title
• Finding books
• Creating a search strategy
• How to cite in APA

Need help?

Psychology Librarian

• Mark Weiler
• Feel free to email mweiler@wlu.ca
• Available by appointments by phone, Skype, or face-to-face

Library user services desk

• 548-889-3766
• online Ask Us chat box
• Available from library opening to midnight all semester