Psychology & Sociology-- Miller

Identifying Original Research Articles

Is it Original Research

You need 2 original research studies (sometimes called reports).

Original research is published in scholarly journals. But not everything published in a scholarly journal is original research.

The definition of a research study is: A quantitative study that incorporates a formal design to test a hypothesis using validated measures in such a fashion as to be capable of replication by others or from which the results may be generalized to other settings.

Typically you can tell if an article will meet your needs just by reading the article title and the abstract (summary paragraph).

1. Is the title detailed and descriptive? A short title, like "Phantom Limb Pain", is unlikely to be a research study. Instead it will likely be an article summarizing current knowledge about the topic and citing state-of-the-art knowledge. Research studies typically have titles that describe exactly what the researchers did. For example: "Can Genetic Risk Information Enhance Motivation for Smoking Cessation? An Analogue Study." Often you will find the word "study" in the title or in the abstract -- the summary that appears in the Primo 1Search record and often at the beginning of the article itself. Reading the abstract will often be enough to clarify for you whether or not you have the right thing.Can't find an abstract? That might be a sign that you don't have an article from a scholarly journal.

2. Check for References. Go to the end to check for list of references. If there isn't one, you don't have a research study. Articles that are studies typically have more than 12 references.

3. Look for the following sections: Methods, Results, Discussion. Here are some examples of how they might look.
 

All of these things indicate that you have found what you are looking for!

You are really looking for research that takes the form of surveys, correlational studies, naturalistic observation, or controlled experiments. But you may as one (1) of your two (2) have any of the following types of research that appears in scholarly journals:

1. A pure literature review -- where the authors, for whatever purpose, only report on the results of several other studies in detail.

2. A case study

3. A meta-analysis -- where researchers take data gathered by previous researchers and analyze it in new ways to produce new results.

Your other article must be an original research study of one of the 4 types noted in the 1st sentence.