Scholarly information comes from a wide variety of sources including academic books, encyclopedias, handbooks, and journals. “Scholarly” is a broad term for publications written by and for researchers and scholars. These publications are typically not found in your local bookstore or public library because they are written for a very specific audience. They are mostly available in university and specialized libraries, not freely available online. This is why it is essential to learn to navigate the Walden Library and use it often!
During your time at Walden, you will be focusing on peer reviewed journal articles, a specific type of scholarly publication that goes through a specialized review process. These types of articles may report on original research or review the work of other researchers.
As you use the Walden Library to search the peer reviewed literature to support your discussion posts and assignments, it is important to understand how the Library is organized. Most modern libraries make their materials available electronically through searchable databases. Here in the Walden Library, you have access to specialized academic databases, many of which are specific to psychology and the social and behavioral sciences.
As part of this week’s Discussion, you will explore the databases in the Walden Library and compare and contrast peer reviewed articles found in these databases to those found online.
To prepare for this Discussion:
Review Learning Resources for this week and familiarize yourself with navigating the Walden Library, searching Library databases, and limiting your searches to full text, peer review, and publication date.
Search the “APA PsycINFO database” in the Walden Library and locate a peer reviewed article on a psychology topic you would like to explore relevant to your area of specialization in your program.
Next, search the Internet and locate an article related to the same topic.
Reflect on the sources of both articles, and evaluate each article using the evaluation methods listed in the Learning Resources.
With these thoughts in mind:
By Day 3
Post a brief descriiption of the articles you found. Next, compare and contrast the articles and explain the differences you noticed between them. Further explain how the use of peer review articles will improve the arguments in your scholarly writing. As a professional in the field of psychology, which article would you use as evidence to support your ideas? Provide the article title and journal name for the article you find in the Library and the URL for the article you found online.
Be sure to support your posts and responses with specific references to this week’s Learning Resources.
Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.
By Day 5
Respond to two of your colleagues and continue the discussion through Day 7. When researching a topic, often leads to another. Choose one of your colleague’s posts and search the Walden Library databases to locate another peer reviewed article on the same topic as your colleague’s article. Describe the article you found and why it might be of interest to your colleague. Include the name of the database where you found it (i.e., APA PsycINFO, etc.) and further provide the citation to the article in APA format (author, publication, year, article title, journal title, and volume/issue/page numbers).
