Psychology - MIOP orientation

This is a guide for students in the Master’s in Psychology with an emphasis in Industrial and Organizational Psychology (MIOP) program.

Library Research Guide

Subject Guide

Angie Brunk

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Contact:

313 Hale Library
Manhattan, KS 66506

Subjects: American Ethnic Studies, Applied Human Sciences, Economics, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, Hospitality Management, Human Development and Family Science, Journalism & Mass Communications, Psychological Sciences, Social Transformation Studies

Finding Resources

Databases:

To get to databases, go to the Libraries’ home page and click on databases under the search box. Databases will find journal/magazine/newspaper articles (and in some cases other materials like book chapters, dissertations, conference presentations, pamphlets, etc.)

Recommended databases for this class include:

PsycInfo (APA)
Contains citations and abstracts of the world’s literature in psychology, behavioral sciences, and related subjects. It includes citations to journal articles from more than 1,900 journal titles, technical reports, and dissertations of psychological relevance from more than 50 countries. Also includes books and book chapters.
ABI/INFORM Collection
Covers scholarly, trade, and general publications as well as regional and national newspapers on topics such as management, business trends, theory and practices, corporate strategy in industries from telecommunications to construction. More than half of the titles indexed in this database provide access to the full text of the articles.

Other useful databases:

Scopus
Scopus is a good starting point for finding articles on almost any topic. It contains over 47,000,000 records to scholarly publications, trade publications and conference proceedings. Scopus is an excellent database for cited reference searching.
Web of Science Core Collection
In addition to searching by keyword, subject, author, etc. for articles in over 8,000 journals, you can do a "cited reference" search to see how frequently and where an article has been cited. Web of Science includes the Social Sciences Citation Index.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global
Find full-text copies of most dissertations written after 1996, and many earlier. If the full-text is not available, you may request it through Interlibrary Loan.
K-State Research Exchange (K-REx)
K-State Research Exchange provides access to scholarly materials created by K-State faculty and students, including journal articles, conference papers, technical reports, white papers, electronic thesis/dissertation/reports (ETDR) and other digital resources.
SAGE Research Methods
A reference resource that will help you understand methods and create research projects.

Books:

Use the Search It box on the Libraries' home page to find books and other materials owned by K-State Libraries.

WorldCat
Contains Information about books, serials, videos, and other items cataloged by institutions including K-State. It contains more than 57 million records with bibliographic information and information regarding which libraries hold the item in question. If K-State does not own the item you need, use Get IT to request it through Interlibrary Loan.
Google Book Search
Lists almost every book ever published, and will often give you a preview of the contents of the book. If K-State does not own the item you need, you can fill out an Interlibrary Loan Request.

How to Search

Most databases, although they look different, search in similar ways. You can search the databases in many ways to find relevant research, including:

If the database has a thesaurus, use it to help you find appropriate subject terms
Use a keyword search for the specific subject you are interested in (organizational, leadership, satisfaction, etc...)
Use OR when you want to find either of the search terms, AND when you want both.
Try truncating keywords using asterisks: financ* to get finance, finances, finanacial, financing, etc. .
Put phrases in quotes: “human resources", "job satisfaction"
Use limits to help find the specific kind of article you want. For example, PsycINFO lets you limit by population or type of study. Most datatabases have limits for date and type of material - you will often want to limit to scholarly journals.

Here is an example of a search using PsycINFO. The first line searches for "human resources". The quotes mean that it will search for the phrase "human resources" rather than human and resources as separate words. On the second line "satisf*" OR "happiness" means that it will find sources with EITHER of those words. The asterisk allows it to be a longer word, so we will get "satisfy", "satisfied", "satisfaction", etc.

When you find a good article, look for a "cited by" number. That means that your article appears in the bibliographies of those publications.

Getting the Materials

Many of the articles you find will be available online. If you don’t see the full text on the database you are searching, use the Get It button to see if the full text of the article is available through another source. If you find a citation to something that we don’t own, most of the time we can borrow it from another library. Articles generally arrive within a day or two, but it can take up to 5-7 business days for books (or longer if you are off campus). Click on “Interlibrary Loan” on the Libraries' home page or “Not available? Request from Interlibrary Loan” from the Get It menu. For more information, see our Interlibrary Services page.