Citation Resources
The most often used citation style for Psychology is:
Organize your sources using Zotero.
DOIs and URLs
Follow these instructions from the American Psychological Association to correctly include DOIs and URLs in your list of references.
What are empirical articles?
In psychology, empirical research articles are peer-reviewed and report on new research that answers one or more specific questions. Empirical research is based on measurable observation and experimentation. When reading an empirical article, think about what research question is being asked or what experiment is being conducted.
How are they organized?
Empirical research articles in psychology typically follow APA style guidelines. They are organized into the following major sections:
- Abstract (An abstract provides a summary of the study.)
- Introduction (This section includes a literature review.)
- Method (How was the experiment or study conducted?)
- Results (What are the findings?)
- Discussion (What did the researchers conclude? What are the implications of the research?)
How should I read an empirical article?
Because empirical research articles follow a particular format, you can dip into the article at multiple points and move around in a non-linear way. First, think about why you're reading the article. Are you looking for specific information or trying to get research ideas? Are you reading it for a course or for your own knowledge? Next, read the abstract to get an overview of the study. Skim the first and last paragraphs of the introduction and results to deepen your understanding of the article as a whole. Read the methods section to understand how the study was organized and conducted. Review the charts, graphs, and statistics to understand the analyses. Skim the remaining pieces of the article, before going back and reading it more closely from the beginning to the end. Don't forget that the references can be a great source for additional empirical articles.
Don't confuse empirical articles with other types of articles.
Be careful not to confuse an empirical article with other types of articles that you might find when researching a psychology topic. Meta-analyis, systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and other types of literature reviews are not empirical articles. Instead, these articles are designed to analyze and summarize the existing literature on a topic. Similarly, don't confuse book reviews with empirical articles. These types of articles might be helpful in your research, but they are not empirical research articles.