Psychology Resource Guide: Primary Empirical Research

Scholarly, peer reviewed articles that report on a primary (empirical) research study often share similar characteristics. The screen shots that follow illustrate how to recognize a research study in Psychology. For additional details, see the guide:

Peer Review and Primary Literature: An Introduction

The abstract summarizes the article. 

Sections describing the research 'methods' ('methodology') and the 'results' or 'findings,' indicate that the article is describing research undertaken by the author(s), - i.e. a primary research study.

The list of References provides the citations to important articles of a similar nature that the researchers used to inform their arguments, - the original 'more like this' feature.

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