HEC 226 Child Development: Find an Article
So you need to find an article...
There are two ways that people doing research usually go looking for articles:
1. Search for a specific journal you're interested in reading articles in. You can learn how to do that here.
2. Search for articles on a specific topic in a library database, which is a searchable collection of thousands of different journals. You can learn how to do that on this page!
Find Articles
Search these databases to find articles on topics related to child development. Be sure to limit your search to peer-reviewed journals only.
- Professional Development Collection This link opens in a new windowA highly specialized collection of over 500 full text journals, designed for professional educators.
- Educator's Reference Complete (Gale OneFile) This link opens in a new windowA collection of more than 1,100 periodicals and 200 reports for any educator -- from the school teacher and administrator to those studying at the collegiate and graduate level.
- Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new windowThe library's largest article database; contains many of the journals on the lists provided by your instructor, but you'll really need to pay attention to the names of journals to make sure they are from your field.
Types of Articles
There are many different types of articles. The chart below can help you figure out which type(s) you're looking for or identify an article you've already found:
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News articles provide the most current information. Certain newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, are also known for thoughtful, in-depth analyses of important topics and events. |
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Popular magazine articles can help you generate ideas about issues, controversies, or unanswered questions about a topic, which you might want to explore further. They sometimes refer to studies or scholarly work that you can track down for more information. |
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Trade publications are written by and for professionals within an industry. These are an excellent source of very specific information from inside the field. |
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Scholarly journal articles go through a process of peer review before they are published. They are written by experts in the field (the people with letters after their name!) and their purpose is to advance the ongoing body of work within the discipline. These articles might present original research data and findings, or take a position on a key question within the field. They can be difficult to read, because their intended audience is other experts and academics, but they are at the top of the line when it comes to authoritative information. |
Finding Peer Reviewed Articles
In all three of the databases to your left, you can put in a few keywords related to your topic and start searching. However, the results you find will be a mix of scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals and popular or professional magazine articles, news articles, reports, and more. You will need to limit your search to just content in peer-reviewed journals.
Here is how you will limit to content in peer-reviewed journals in the Professional Development Collection and Academic Search Premier:
and here's how you will do it in Educator's Reference Complete:
One important thing to note is that not everything in a peer-reviewed journal is peer-reviewed. News items, editorials, and book reviews are not peer-reviewed articles. You're going to want to look for an article that reports on the results of research and is, more often than not, more than three pages long. Clicking on the title of an article will take you to an Abstract, which will give you a brief summary of what the article is about.