Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Psychology information

Assignment to Find Biographical Sketches

In PSY 3064 (Personality and Individual Differences) there is an assignment that students are asking us for help with this week. The students are looking for a single “biographical sketch” of specific psychologists. Some of those psychologists they are looking for are still alive, which can make finding the biographical sketches. Here are some suggestions:

  1. Start with Gale Virtual Reference Library
  2. Move on to the biography databases if GVRL turns up nothing
  3. If all else fails, try a Google search, as it may be that the person being looked for is still alive and that person may have profile page at some university or college where they currently work

Challenging Research Assignments in PSY 4012 (Evolution of Modern Psychology)

In the coming weeks, expect to see some particularly broad and challenging research questions from students in PSY 4012 (Evolution of Modern Psychology). This is the capstone class for the psychology minor and is made up of 12 recitation sections. Each recitation section is broken down into small groups to write portions of a textbook about the history of psychology. Students are expected to go deeper than a mere litany of this researcher said this, then that research said that. Instead, they are expected to explore the connections between ideas in psychology and philosophy and to look at how historical forces affected the directions that psychological research moved in.

The instructor who teaches the two sections, Prof. David O’Brien, kindly shared with me the research topics that each section had to write about. As per his wishes, I’m not posting the topics here but have put them in the password-protected Library Services wiki on the Assignments page.

If you get any students asking for help with questions that sound like they might be for this class, please consider:

Big Research Projects in PSY 4012

This spring, you’ll likely be encountering students in reference asking for help with an assignment in PSY 4012 (Evolution of Modern Psychology) where they are expected to write a textbook chapter on one of these five broad sets of questions:

  1. What is consciousness and how have psychologists dealt with it? Does psychology need biology to understand consciousness, or does biology merely provide a distraction and lead us into nonproductive directions about how to understand consciousness? Can psychology deal with both mind and body in a coherent way, or must one be basic and the other subservient? What alternatives have philosophy and psychology provided to deal with the issue?
  2. How important has evolutionary theory been in the history of psychology? Have psychologists really understood evolutionary theory and its implications, or have many of them worked from a distorted idea of what evolution theory is about?
  3. Has psychology been a more productive science when viewed in terms of reductionism or in terms of holism? What has been gained and what has been lost with each of these two competing perspectives? Should psychology finally choose one or the other of these perspectives, or is there an advantage to having a tension between the two among scientific psychologists? What is at stake when someone proposes that psychology should be eclectic and include both perspectives?
  4. Should there be a separate science of psychology, or did the idea of separate science of psychology emerge only because of historical and philosophical conditions in Germany at the time the first psychology lab was opened in 1879? Was this beginning merely an accident of history, or can one explain why such an event would have taken place then? What sense does it make for psychology to be both a science and a collection of applied practices, such as clinical psychology, school psychology, etc. Should we continue with the same set of boundaries between the separate sciences that we have today, or should we re-think the existence of a separate science of psychology that combines both the scientific and the applied?
  5. Does psychology require the assumption of determinism if it is to be a science? Can it include the notion of free will as well as determinism? Can it deal with both determinism and free will at the same time in a coherent way?

I just taught workshops for two of the sections of this class and want to share the strategy I was recommending to them and the handout I gave them:

  • Start with Gale Virtual Reference Library. Look up the big concepts (reductionism, free will, evolutionary psychology,  etc.) in multiple encyclopedias (especially ones in psychology and philosophy) to get intro to the topic, search words, names of leading researchers and theorists.
  • Go next to find literature review articles in PsycINFO. Also browse the Thesaurus in PsycINFO to identify preferred terms and to discover additional related ones.
  • Then search broadly across PsycINFO for articles, etc.

Here is the handout all the students in my workshops received. 

Let me know if you have any questions or if you want to refer any students to see me.

Finding Literature Reviews on Psychology Topics

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.”

New Database: Counseling and Therapy in Video

This database from Alexander Street Press features more than 600 videos for the study of social work, psychotherapy, psychology, and psychiatric counseling. You can narrow searches by type of video:

  • Consultations
  • Counseling session
  • Demonstration
  • Documentary
  • Dramatized scene
  • Interview
  • Lecture/presentation
  • Personal narrative

As videos play, a highlighted transcript scrolls along the right side of the screen.

Records for the videos will be loaded into the catalog shortly.

Trial to PsycTESTS and PsycTHERAPY

We have an on campus trial to the two databases above until November 6, 2011. They all show up on the same platform as we have our APA books, which may be confusing. Also, each of these can be searched together or individually but the default for the trial is that everything is selected, including the APA books.

PsycTESTS is a repository for the full text of psychological tests and measures as well as a rich source of structured information about the tests.

PsycTHERAPY is a database of streaming psychotherapy demonstration videos; users may create playlists, clips, search transcripts of videos, and more.

Please share with interested faculty and I welcome all feedback.