Working with one of the professors in the psychology department who expects her students to find literature reviews on various topics in psychology, I put together a how-to guide as part of my larger psychology research guide. The secret to finding these types of articles is to use the Methodology limiter in PsycINFO. There are two limiters that will help students find these types of articles:
- Literature Review
- PsycINFO definition: “Survey of previously published literature on a particular topic to define and clarify a particular problem; summarize previous investigations; identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature; and suggest the next step in solving the problem.”
- Systematic Review
- PsycINFO definition: “A form of literature review that comprehensively identifies, appraises, and synthesizes all relevant research on a specifically formulated question.”
A related Methodology limiter is “Meta Analysis,” which PsycINFO defines as “Statistical analysis of previously published empirical data.”