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PSYC 3382: Adolescent Psychology

This guide provides resources and suggested strategies to support research in Adolescent Psychology.

Welcome!

 

Welcome the research guide for Adolescent Psychology. 

This guide will help you find:

  • background info on your topic
  • research articles for your paper to help you contextualize your work
  • ebooks
  • information about saving and citing your references

I am happy to assist with your research in this class in any way I can. Feel free to email me (jlagerst@barnard.edu) or schedule a research consultation. We can talk via phone, email, chat, Zoom, Google Hangouts   -- whatever works!

Jill Lagerstrom

Visiting STEM Librarian

Rorschach blot by Hermann Rorschach
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Getting ready to search

Break down the ideas in your topic into specific concepts such as 

CONCEPT EXAMPLES
Psychiatric concept or disorder Motivation, Depression, Anxiety, Coping strategies
Age Adolescent, Teen, Teenager
Social group or concept African-Americans, Refugees, Social media
Social structure Religion, Church, School
Gender Female, Woman, Women, Girl, Girls

If searching a scholarly database -- such as PsycINFO or Medline,  find thesaurus terms and limits to best find relevant results.

If searching a more "free form" resource (CLIO or Google Scholar) construct a search string using these advanced search techniques: 

  • Use "quotation marks" to search for an exact phrase: "feminist theory".
  • Use * for truncation (to find variant spellings and endings of a word): parent* will find parent, parents, parental, parenthood, etc.; wom*n will find woman, women, womyn, etc.
  • For more complex search, use AND and OR (note that AND and OR must be in ALL CAPS for this to work correctly in CLIO):
    • AND finds records which have ALL the search terms you entered.
    • OR finds records which have one of the search terms you entered, as well as records which have more than one of the terms. OR finds MORE.
    • For more help with using AND and OR, check our guide to advanced/Boolean keyword searching.
  • Use parentheses ( ) to group terms:  comed* AND (televis* OR film*)