PSY 3360 Psychological Disorders

For this course, you'll be completing a few assignments*, where you'll need to track down scholarly research on a specific psychological disorder.

This guide will provide a starting place for looking for reference sources (such as encyclopedias and handbooks), books, and peer-reviewed journal articles that will provide useful evidence for your paper/presentation.

Do some initial searching on your own, and then contact me with your questions. I'm happy to schedule a consultation with you to discuss your specific topic.

*Check your syllabus for more details about your assignments.

• Start with the APA PsycInfo database, but consider other databases that might relate to your topic. 
• Always keep in mind: What sources will provide the best evidence to support your argument (e.g. recent, peer-reviewed, literature reviews, empirical studies)? What background information will you need (e.g book chapters, reference books, literature reviews)?
• Schedule an appointment with me early on, but after you’ve done some searching

• Background: using a source to provide general information to explain the topic. For example, the use of the APA Handbook of Community Psychology to explain the core concepts of how diversity, multiculturalism, and inclusion relate to community psychology .
• Exhibit: using a source as evidence or examples to interpret or analyze. For a literature paper, this would be a poem you are analyzing. For a history paper, a historical document you are analyzing. For a psychology paper, it might be the data from a study.
• Argument: using a source as evidence to agree, disagree, or build upon. For example, you might use an editorial from the New York Times on the value of higher education to refute in your own paper.
• Method: using a source’s way of analyzing an issue to apply to your own issue. For example, you might use a study’s methods, definitions, or conclusions on gentrification in Chicago to apply to your own neighborhood in Seattle.

Excerpt revised from "How to Use a Source: The BEAM Method" by Wendy Hayden and Stephanie Margolin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.