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PSYC 205: Introduction to Personality: Scholarly articles & studies

This guide includes resources relating to personality and personality assessments.

Psychology library databases

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Video tutorial:

Peer-reviewed articles and how to read them

A journal article that is peer-reviewed/scholarly with empirical evidence usually includes the following:

  • abstract, which provides a summary of the article
  • introduction, which includes background info and description of the author's purpose
  • materials & methods, which has details about the study so that other scientists could repeat the study
  • results, which includes any new observations, data and findings
  • discussion, which describe what the findings mean and their implications, and address potential criticisms of the study

Source: "Anatomy of a Journal Article" by Dominique Turnbow, UC San Diego Libraries

Source: "How to Read and Comprehend Scientific Research Articles" by umnLibraries is licensed under the Standard YouTube License

Highlights of the video:

BASIC STRUCTURE
  1. ABSTRACT (Why? How? What?)
  2. INTRODUCTION (Hypothesis, Survey of the Literature - Broad to specific) 
  3. METHODS (How to replicate the study. Detailed explanation of data sources or original collection (primary/secondary), as well as methodolog/ies applied.)
  4. RESULTS (Tables and Figures. May include discussion of validation instrument and whether the findings were significant.) ​
  5. DISCUSSION (Including questions for further research.)
A- D- I- R- M ORDER 
  1. Abstract (Why? How? What?)
  2. Discussion (Answers the hypothesis or research question and explains how results support the conclusion.)
  3. Introduction
  4. Results 
  5. Methods 
MAIN POINTS FREQUENTLY SUGGESTED BY:  
  • TITLE; ABSTRACT; KEYWORDS; TABLES & FIGURES; END OF THE INTRODUCTION 

Journals related to personality theories

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