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Finding Resources in Psychology Table of Contents
Getting Started
Journal Articles
Books
Evaluating Materials
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Primary vs. Secondary Sources Many instructors ask you to use primary sources in your research. You can think of primary sources as those delivering the information "straight from the horse's mouth." In Psychology research, these primary sources are usually scholarly articles reporting on original research. They are considered primary sources, because the people who wrote the article are the ones who did the research, and they are reporting directly on their own results. They usually publish their articles in scholarly journals, such as Journal of Clinical Psychology. (Of course, if you are reporting on research that you did yourself, such as results from a survey or questionnaire, your data would be a primary source, too!) Popular magazines and newspapers often report on these scholarly articles. They rephrase the terminology to make it easier for a general audience to read, and they skip a lot of the details. These reports are considered to be secondary sources, because you are not getting the information directly from the person or persons who did the research.
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