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Welcome to the Research Guide for PSYC 245! Below is a review of everything you need to know to get started on your research project. If you need help, use the chat box in the lower right-hand corner of the screen or the contact information in the left-hand corner.
Different sources serve different purposes. In your research, you will draw on a variety of sources to ensure you have a quality research project. There are two ways we can classify sources, but type of data/information represented and by audience.
Scholarly sources are written by researchers in a given field for scholars in a given field. Scholarly sources can take the form of journal articles or scholarly books, often called monographs. Scholarly sources are published through a process known as peer-review.
A primary source is a scholarly source that discusses original research.
Secondary sources can be scholarly or popular. Secondary sources summarize existing research. Scholarly secondary sources are often called "reviews" or "meta-analysis".
Popular or Web sources are written by journalists, researchers, government officials, members of the general public, and others with the audience of the general public in mind. Sometimes a source, like data from the WHO or FDA falls in a grey area between scholarly and popular sources. This is data that is published online, but the intended audience may be researchers or professionals in a given field. Information like this is not classified as "scholarly" because it is not published in a peer reviewed journal.