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PSYC 101 - General Psychology - Mills

Overview

This assignment asks you to discuss two psychological perspectives, including an overview of the perspective and its history and founding, as well as its application to a problem or issue in the field.  Your assignment requires at least three sources, including two scholarly articles, but you may need more than this minimum number in order to find everything the assignment asks you to write about!  

Several different types of information resources will be useful in completing this assignment, including:

  • Reference databases
  • Scholarly article databases
  • Biographical databases, and
  • Books from the library catalog

 

Reference Databases

 

Reference databases provide (relatively) short articles designed to give an overview of a topic.  See the group presentations page of this guide for more information about reference databases.  

Searching reference databases is similar to searching periodical databases or the catalog, but there are some differences.  With these databases, you should:

  • Use single words or short phrases, like with everything else, but
  • Search for one concept at a time.
    • For instance, you can search for a theoretical perspective, like "behaviorism" or "psychodynamics."
    • You can also search for major figures, like "B.F. Skinner" or "Sigmund Freud."  

The following databases are recommended choices for this assignment:

Scholarly Article Databases

Remember that the library databases are the best places to find scholarly articles that you can read for free, and that these databases require different search techniques than Google.  You can review additional information about scholarly article databases on the welcome page, references assignment page, and scholarly article review page of this guide. 

Searching Tips:

  • Use single words or short phrases
  • Put one concept in each search box: for this assignment, you will usually use one box for terms relating to the psychological perspective, and at least one for the applied topic.
  • For instance, "behaviorism" in one box and "preschool OR early childhood education" in the other.  
  • Filter your results for full text, scholarly articles.

The following are some databases that are good choices for this assignment: 

Journal articles for Psychology can also be found in the library's multidisciplinary databases and databases relating to health/medicine; however, these other databases will also have journal articles for other subject areas.  If you choose to use any of these other databases, you will need to make sure that the articles you choose are psychology articles.  

 

Biographical Database

Our biographical database, Biography In Context, provides encyclopedia-type articles about famous people, as well as selected periodical articles, from newspapers, magazines, and (occasionally) academic journals.  The periodical articles may include recent content as well as articles from the person's lifetime.  

To search this database, simply enter the person's name in the basic search box.  Results are sorted by source type; click on a title to view the full article, or on a category to see more articles of that type.  

Library Catalog

Finally, you may wish to use the library catalog to find books and multimedia about your topic. For more information about books and the catalog, see the references assignment page of this guide.  

The catalog includes many ebooks and streaming videos that you can access from home; in addition, HACC libraries are now open (as of 2/7/2022) for you to come in and use the physical collection.  Remember that, as a HACC student, you are welcome to use books/media housed at any of the 5 campuses.  Any item that can be checked out, can be sent to any campus for pickup.  Simply click the "Request It!" button and choose the campus where you'd like to pick it up--you'll be notified when it's ready for you.  

Tips for searching the catalog:

  • Use single words or short phrases
  • You can try putting both the theoretical perspective and the applied topic, such as "behaviorism early childhood education."
  • If that doesn't work, try searching for just the perspective or the applied topic, separately.  
  • You can then search within a book for terms relating to the other part of your topic. 
    • For instance, find a book about early childhood education, and search in that book for "behaviorism."  

 

The HACC Library Catalog is a searchable database of books, periodical titles, and audio-visual material available at Harrisburg Area Community College.