Library Resources for Educational Psychology & Counseling 607

Research in Motivation in Learning and Development: Theories and Application in Educational Psychology-- Adele E. Gottfried, Professor
Library Instruction Session -- Eric P. Garcia, Librarian

  

"Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodationsr."
~ Jean Piaget

California State University, Northridge

Oviatt Library (http://library.csun.edu)

Librarian

Eric P. Garcia (http://library.csun.edu/egarcia)

Tutorials

• Accessing the Oviatt Library homepage
• PsycINFO (EBSCO) – Finding a Thesaurus Descriptor in PsycINFO
• Searching for any journal or magazine title

Searching Tips and Tricks

When searching databases, the goal is to find a small number (e.g. 10-30) of articles relevant to your topic. Here are some tips for improving your search results:

• Most databases allow you to choose a date range, so you can limit the search to recently-published articles only.
• Most allow you to choose English articles only, which can further reduce your results.
• Many also allow you to limit your results to peer-reviewed journals, which contain high-quality scholarly articles.
• In keyword searching, a truncation symbol (usually *) expands your search by including various forms of a root word, e.g. teen*
  • retrieves:
    • teen
    • teen's
    • teena
    • teenage
    • teenaged
    • teenager
    • teenager's
    • teend
    • teener
    • teenie, etc.
• Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) serve to either narrow or expand your search: OR expands it by including synonyms or related terms (e.g. Homeless* OR Shelter*); AND narrows it by finding the subset of articles that contain both search terms you want (Homeless* AND Veteran*); NOT narrows your search by eliminating articles that contain a specific term you do not want (neglect NOT abuse). An easy way to remember the difference is the rhyme OR gives you MORE, while the other two operators give you less (although they may be better results).

PsycINFO

Methodology Terms

Books

Library Catalog - for books, videos, and archival materials that will help you identify informative and persuasive topics. Use the KEYWORD search if you aren't sure of the official Subject Headings for your topic.

Keywords examples:

• Idea: Effect and parental support and student’s and intrinsic motivation
• Suggest using: parent* and (support or involvement) and (child* or adolescent* or student*) and (intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation)
• Idea: motivation for Latino adolescent females
• Suggest using: motivation* and (Latina* or Hispanic* or Mexican American*) and (child* or adolescent*)
• Idea: effects of academic counselors on high school students motivation to pursue higher education
• Suggest using: high school* and counselors and motivation and (high education or college or university)
• Idea: intrinsic motivation and classroom management
• Suggest using: (intrinsic motivation or goal setting or goal orientation or educational objectives or motivation or incentives) and classroom management
• Idea: motivation for career change
• Suggest using: (motivation or job satisfaction or occupational stress or employee motivation) and career change
• Idea: phonemic awareness
• Suggest using: Phonemic awareness and teaching method* and (comprehension or recognition) [or search by subject: DE "Phonological Awareness"]

Subject Headings examples:

• Classrooms
• Colleges
• Comprehension
• Educational Counseling
• High School Students
• High Schools
• Human Information Storage
• Intervention
• Language
• Phonological Awareness
• Reading Disabilities
• School Counselors
• School Environment
• Student Admission Criteria
• Teaching Methods
• Word Recognition

Journal Articles

Databases A-Z - the Oviatt Library has over 100 databases. To look for articles in journals, newspapers, or magazines, you will need to start with a research database. The following databases provide abstracts and full-text articles from thousands of journals and other sources.

PsycINFO (EBSCO)
Indexes over 2,000 journals plus books and book chapters, 1987-present.

PsycARTICLES (EBSCO)
Full text access to peer-reviewed articles from more than 50 journals in psychology, including journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA), covering general, specialized, applied, clinical and theoretical research in psychology. 1894-

Education Full Text (Wilson)
Articles from over 550 education journals; indexing 1983-, abstracts 1994-, select full text 1996-

Academic Search Elite (EbscoHost)
Index of articles from the contents pages of over 22,000 journals, 1990-

JSTOR
Comprehensive archive of back issues of core scholarly journals in education.

ERIC (EBSCO)
Full text to more than 2,200 digests, and citations and abstracts from over 1,000 educational and education-related journals. ERIC on EbscoHost

RAND California
California economic and public policy issues, including over 80 statistical databases with data at various geographic levels, some covering the entire nation.

Plagiarism and APA citation style

Remember to cite not only direct quotes, but also other people's ideas. If you paraphrase something, changing a few words to make it sound less like a direct quote, you still have to cite it. If you are uncertain, it is better to cite a source than to be accused of plagiarism for not citing something you should have.

APA

• Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2001.
  Reference Room BF76.7 .P83 2001
  Reserve Desk BF76.7 .P83 2001
  Floor2 BF76.7 .P83 2001
• APA Formatting and Style Guide by Eric P. Garcia at California State University, Northridge.

Contact Information

Created and maintained by Eric P. Garcia
Questions or comments: eric.garcia@csun.edu

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