PSYC 446: Human Sexual Behavior

This page has information to help you:

• Select sources for your research paper assignment
• Use the sources you select to build your arguments
• Analyze scientific articles

Are your sources appropriate for university-level research? Ask questions about your sources when you're deciding whether or not to use them for your research assignments:

Currency: The timeliness of the information 

• When was the information published or posted?
• Has it been updated?
• Do you need the most current, up-to-date information on your topic?

Relevance: The information meets your assignment needs 

• Does the source meet your assignment requirements?
• Does the information directly relate to your topic?
• Does it help you answer questions?
• Have you looked at other sources to find the best one?

Authority: The source of the information 

• Who is the author or publisher?
• Are they qualified to write about this area?
• If it's a website, what does the URL say about the source, i.e. .com .edu .gov .org?

Accuracy: The reliability and correctness of the information 

• Is the information supported by citations or other evidence?
• Can you verify the information with another source?
• Is the author or publisher biased or unbiased? 

Purpose: The reason the information exists

• What is the purpose of the information? To inform, sell, persuade, or entertain?
• Is the information given a fact or an opinion?
• Is the author or publisher biased or unbiased?

Ask yourself these questions about each of the articles you select to build your own informed opinions and arguments:

Does your article raise questions you hadn't considered or make claims that shape your thinking? -Integrate these into your arguments to develop and focus them further 

Does your article provide evidence for any of your arguments? -Integrate the relevant evidence or data into your own argument and explain its significance

Does your article take a position counter to any of your arguments? -Include these sources to strengthen your own arguments by explaining and providing evidence of why you disagree with them

What relationships do you see between your articles? -Integrate the arguments and evidence from your sources together to use them as building blocks for your own conclusions and arguments

Use the scholarly articles you select to build your own informed opinions and arguments.

When you're reading scholarly articles for your assignments, look for key information like:

• What is the main hypothesis? 
• Why is this research important?
• Did the researchers use appropriate measures and procedures? How did they choose them?
• What are the study's independent and dependent variables?
• What were the key research findings?
• Is the evidence falsifiable?
• Does the evidence (data) support the authors' conclusions?
• How do the arguments in this article affect what you think about your research topic or question?

Try out the post How to Read and Get the Most out of a Journal Articles, by the Journal of European Psychology Students (JEPS), which describes the Three Pass Approach to reading and understanding Psychology journal articles.