Librarian
Start With These
These core Psychology databases are good places to start!
- PsycInfo (1887 to present) This link opens in a new windowCovers the academic literature in psychology and related disciplines, including psychiatry, sociology, education, and other areas.
- PsycTESTS (1896 to present) This link opens in a new windowProvides access to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments as well as descriptive information about the test and its development and administration.
More Library Databases
- GenderWatch (1970 to present) This link opens in a new windowFull text of publications that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas.
- PEP (Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing) (1871 to present) This link opens in a new windowComplete text and illustrations of 49 journals in psychoanalysis, 96 classic psychoanalytic books, and the full text and editorial notes of the 42 volumes of the standard editions of Freud.
- PILOTS: Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress (now PTSDPubs) This link opens in a new windowIndexes literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health aftereffects of traumatic events.
- PubMed (1966 to present) This link opens in a new windowCore biomedical index; includes MEDLINE and links to molecular biology databases.
- SciTech Premium (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowThe SciTech Premium Collection includes the Natural Science Collection, and the Technology Collection and provides full-text titles from around the world, including scholarly journals, trade and industry journals, magazines, technical reports, conference proceedings, government publications, and more.
- Social Science Database (ProQuest) This link opens in a new windowCovers academic literature for disciplines ranging from anthropology, sociology, and political science to communication, education, criminology, demography, economics, and more.
- Sociological Abstracts (1952 to present) This link opens in a new windowCovers the international literature in sociology and related disciplines.
- SPORTDiscus with Full Text This link opens in a new windowResearch tool for all areas of sports & sports medicine literature
- Web of Science (1984 to present) This link opens in a new windowSearch thousands of journals across the sciences and social sciences and track cited references to locate more recent articles. Amherst subscribes to the Social Sciences Citation Index and Science Citation Index.
Empirical Research Articles: How to find them
These articles report original research or studies (actual observations or experiments), rather than theoretical developments or methodological approaches. You can identify them in several ways:
- keywords: look for “study,” “empirical,” or mentions of participants, observations, methodology/measurements
- structure: usually includes introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections
- publication: should be in an academic or professional journal, rather than in popular magazines or newspapers
PsycInfo is a good first place to check! This database contains scholarly journals that publish empirical research articles.
Tip: Peer-reviewed articles
Peer-reviewed articles are:
- written by experts in the field
- assessed for validity and scholarly rigor by other experts in the field (peer review)
- published in scholarly journals