Library Website : Psychology: Starting Your Research

What is Background Research?

Background research is the research you do before you start writing your paper. Doing background research is helpful for focusing your topic and finding out what information is available to you.

Background research can take many forms, but here's a few ways you can get started:

Choose one or two keywords from your area of interest or assignment description and put them into GLOCAT or a database and see what comes up. Skim over the titles to find ones that sound interesting, and use those to narrow down your topic.
Look through encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other reference sources related to your field for more information on your area of interest. This can help you learn about more specific aspects of your topic that you can use for your assignment, as well as spark new keywords you can search.
Try Wikipedia! While Wikipedia isn't a source you can cite for an assignment, it does have plenty of background information on a wide variety of topics. You can read the Wikipedia page for background information, and most pages will have a references list at the bottom you can use to help find scholarly sources.
Choose a journal in your field and skim the most recent titles to get a sense of what topics are trending.

Using GLOCAT

GLOCAT (Advanced Search)
Search SUNY Geneseo's Library holdings, and holdings of libraries from around the world (including all SUNY libraries), plus hundreds of databases for print and online content.

Use GLOCAT through the link above or the search box on the library homepage to find materials.

"Milne Search" will bring back materials we currently have available through Geneseo, while "SUNY & Worldwide Libraries" will bring back materials you can request through IDS.

Reference Sources

Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window
Encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary and subject specific research in areas such as art, business, education, history, etc.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5 by American Psychiatric Association Staff
ISBN: 9780890425541
Publication Date: 2013-05-22
This new edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), used by clinicians and researchers to diagnose and classify mental disorders, is the product of more than 10 years of effort by hundreds of international experts in all aspects of mental health. Their dedication and hard work have yielded an authoritative volume that defines and classifies mental disorders in order to improve diagnoses, treatment, and research. The criteria are concise and explicit, intended to facilitate an objective assessment of symptom presentations in a variety of clinical settings--inpatient, outpatient, partial hospital, consultation-liaison, clinical, private practice, and primary care.
Cognitive Psychology by Michael W. Eysenck; Mark T. Keane
ISBN: 9781841695402
Publication Date: 2010-01-27
Previous editions have established this best-selling student handbook as THE cognitive psychology textbook of choice, both for its academic rigour and its accessibility.
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning by Keith J. Holyoak (Editor); Robert G. Morrison (Editor)
ISBN: 9780199734689
Publication Date: 2012-03-21
The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is a comprehensive and authoritative handbook covering all the core topics of the field of thinking and reasoning. Written by the foremost experts from cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience, individual chapters summarize basic concepts and findings for a major topic, sketch its history, and give a sense of the directions in which research is currently heading.