Psychology 1101 - Mazza - Spring 2011  

 This assignment is part of Information Competency at GHC. This assignment will allow you to demonstrate IC @ GHC outcomes 2 and 3. These outcomes state that you can access the needed information effectively and efficiently (outcome 2) and  that you can evaluate information and its sources critically (outcome 3).

 Using Galileo, find the following four articles. Then complete the answer grid by answering each of the questions. Information to help you answer these questions can be found on the following page.

1. LGBT youth More Likely to be Punished. By AASECT. In Contemporary Sexuality 2011, vol. 45, issue 1.

2. The acute effects of caffeinated versus non-caffeinated alcoholic beverage on driving performance and attention/reaction time. By: Howland, Rohsenow, Arnedt, Bliss, Hunt, Calise, Heeren, Winter, Littlefield, and Gottlieb. In Addiction 2011 Feb; Vol. 106 (2).

3. Using Giant African Pouched Rats to Detect Landmines. In The Psychological Record, 2010 vol. 60. Issue 4. By Poling, Weetjens, Cox, Beyene, and Sully.

4. The Top of My Head Came Off: A Phenomenological Interpretive analysis of the Experience of Depression. By Rhodes and Smith. In Counseling Psychology Quarterly 2010, vol. 23, issue 4.

Students will only need to turn in a copy of this chart to be graded. A hard copy is preferred in class on the due date.  Students can submit their assignment on Vista until 11:59pm  on the due date as a last resort.

If you need additional help completing the assignment see resources below!

1. Was it available in full text?  If there is only a short description, you probably have the abstract which is a summary of the article.  Check to see if you can find the full text of the article.  Sometimes you have to use a “find it” icon in Galileo.

2.     Was the article peer reviewed?   Peer reviewed means reviewed by experts in the field.  Sarah Hepler, Georgia Highlands College librarian, provided the following information to help make determinations about whether an article was peer reviewed: 

The only way to absolutely ensure that something is peer reviewed is to apply the peer reviewed criteria. These can be viewed here: http://www.utoledo.edu/library/help/guides/journalvsmag.html

In some databases in GALILEO, you can check and make sure that something is peer-reviewed by clicking on the journal name from the "abstract" page - sometimes this info is located on the abstract page itself. So for example, with this article: http://proxygsu-flo1.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hgh&AN=25653142&site=ehost-live you can click on Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, scroll down, and look next to "Peer-Reviewed" to see if the article is peer-reviewed or not. However, this is only possible in some of the EBSCO databases - otherwise, the criteria should be applied.

As far as PsycInfo goes, if you go to the informational screen for the database it tells us that "ninety-eight percent of the covered material is peer-reviewed"; thus, not everything in PsycInfo is peer-reviewed.

3.     Was your article a primary source?  If the writers are reporting research that they did, it is a primary source.  If the writer(s) is reporting someone else’s research (as often happens in newspapers), it is not a primary source.

4.     Is the author writing to report the results of an experiment?   In an experiment, the researchers manipulate a variable to see if it has an effect.  This contrasts with the correlational approach which looks at patterns without specifically manipulating anything.  Hockenbury and Hockenbury (2010) also note that sometimes a variable has been manipulated by the environment and could be called a natural experiment.