How do I conduct research for a Literature Review in Psychology?

How do I conduct research for a Literature Review in Psychology?

Effectively researching a topic or diagnosis requires a great deal of reading, learning, analyzing, and applying the information to a specific case or client a psychologist is attempting to help.  In order to learn more about a given topic, a psychologist must compile relevant information.  


Step 1:  Research and find articles.  

It is a good idea to start with articles that are easier to understand, take notes on them and use them to understand more complex and in-depth articles.  Here is a list of websites to use when researching psychology articles. 


Step 2: Read Selectively 

Read the abstract of each article and get an overview of the study. Scan the article for the “W” questions. 

  • Why did they do the study?  Why does it matter? This is the introduction of the article, which includes the research question and the hypothesis.  

  • What did they do to conduct the study? This information is in the methods section of the case study. 

  • What did they find out or learn from the study? This information is in the results section of the case study. 

  • What does it mean?  What are the implications or generalizations gleaned from the study? This information is in the discussion section of the case study. 


Step 3: Create a Summary 

As you’re reading through the articles and journals, take note of the information to answer the previous questions.  This will help to integrate the information into your own Literature Review. 


Step 4: Reread the Articles for Depth and Understanding 

After making a quick summary of each article, go back and read each article more in-depth.  This will help you to compare this work to your own case study.



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