DHS 3000 Dr. Miller: Home

Research Support

• Schedule a one-on-one appointment with your librarian. Use the "Schedule Appointment" button in the "Librarian" box on this page.

EBSCO Tutorial

Reading Strategies

Writing Support (In-person and Virtual)

Citing Sources in APA Style

• Identify types of research articles to determine fit within your proposal
• Evaluate scope of found information to determine fit within your proposal
• Recognize correct APA citation format for journal articles (periodicals)

What is a scholarly article?

Scholarly articles (published in print and/or online scholarly journals) are reviewed by experts in a process known as peer review before they are published. They are written by and for other scholars or experts. Not all articles published in scholarly journals are

• original research (empirical) article
  • based on an experiment or study. This type of article will have a methodology section that tells how the experiment was set up and conducted, a results or discussion section, and usually a conclusion section.
• review article (literature review or systematic review)
  • written to bring together and summarize the results/conclusions from multiple original research articles/studies. This types of article will not usually have a methodology section, and they generally have very extensive bibliographies.
• theoretical article
  • written to contribute to the theoretical foundations of a field of study. In this type of article, an author will draw upon existing research to form a new theory or explore theories in new ways.

Other content you may find in scholarly journals:

• book review
  • while written by scholars, book reviews in scholarly journals are meant to provide a summary of a newly published book. Book reviews can lead to the discovery of new sources to investigate.
• editorial
  • while written by editors of scholarly journals, these articles are summaries of content included in a specific issue of a journal. Editorials can lead to the discovery of new sources to investigate.

Instructions

Step 1. Click on the article title.

Step 2. Read the abstract (overview) provided for the article. (If the abstract is not present, click on "find it" or "PDF full text" to look at the full text).

Step 3. Look specifically for the purpose of the article and/or the research method used by the authors.

1. Relevance begins with the search terms you use. 

• Be specific, but not too specific.
• Identify the main concepts that describe your topic and combine those as keywords. (In other words, don't type a full sentence or question into the search box).

2. Use the database filters.

• Select scholarly/peer-reviewed journals
• Change the date range to find articles from 2016-2022

3. Browse through your results. If the title sounds promising, read the abstract (overview).

• If you're still unsure, read the conclusion of the article. These two sections should give you a good sense if the article is relevant.

5. Consider the scope of the articles you find. Articles that are more broad in nature are more suitable for the introduction section. Articles that are more specific in nature, such as empirical studies, are better suited for the literature review.

• Broader articles might be theoretical, or they might feature trends or data from a variety of populations or locales.

6. Save more articles than you think you need. As you read more closely later, you may decide that some of them are not as relevant as you thought.

Instructions

Step 1. Open this document

Step 2. Click on the article title.

Step 2. Click on "Cite" in the right-hand column

Step 3. Scroll down until you see APA 7th ed. style

Step 4. Pay attention to details such as: punctuation, format (such as italics), and capitalization. Compare the example citations provided above with the rough draft citation provided by the database.