Use the Journals tab on the library's homepage to search for a specific journal title or browse journals by subject.

• American Journal of Community Psychology
• American Journal of Psychology
• American Psychologist
• Annual Review of Clinical Psychology
• Annual Review of Psychology
• Biological Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Culture & Psychology
• Current Psychology
• Journal of Comparative Psychology
• Journal of Emotional & Behavioral Disorders
• Neuropsychology
• Psychological Bulletin
• Psychological Review
• Psychology & Health
• Psychology of Women Quarterly
• Theory and Psychology
• Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

• Allen Brain Atlas
• American Psychological Association
• APA: Student Research & Writing
• American Psychiatric Association
• Association for Psychological Science
• Classics in the History of Psychology 
• Cognitive Science Society
• Internet Resources in Psychology and Related Disciplines
• Data Repositories
• National Institute of Mental Health
• Psychology Education Resource Guide
• Questionnaire Instrument Compendium
• Social Psychology Network
• Web Center for Social Research Methods
• Whole Brain Atlas

Request to purchase books and articles we don't have access to.

Request materials through Interlibrary Loan.

1. Select a topic that interests you and do some pre-research. Look at course readings and class notes. Find information using Google, Wikipedia, CQ Researcher, or Credo Reference if you need ideas.  

2. Consider the scope of your topic. If it is too narrow, you might have trouble finding enough information. If it is too broad, you can be overwhelmed with information. 

• Think about your assignment prompt while determining the scope of your topic. It is important to consider the size of the assignment and the length of time you have to complete it in thinking about scope.  

• Find more on narrowing your topic.  

3. Turn your focused topic into a research question. Know that your research question may change slightly depending on what sorts of resources you find. While you should have a topic or question in mind, allow the sources you find, along with your interests, to help shape and refine your topic further.    

Questions to guide the development of your research question: 

• Is it focused enough to be covered in my paper or project? 

• Is there enough literature available on this topic? 

• What is the question that my research is answering? 

• Am I genuinely interested in this topic? 

• Is my topic going to be new and interesting to my audience?

•  How do you determine if a resource has quality, useful information?

Brainstorming keywords for your topic will help you refine your topic, find the most information about your topic and save you time by helping you search databases in a more efficient and systematic way. (Why? Different authors will refer to the same concept in different ways. Having a comprehensive list of keywords to search will help you find more information about your topic in an efficient and systematic way!) 

1. Pick out the main ideas in your research question. For example, the main ideas in this research question are in bold: How is climate change affecting migratory animals in Montana?  

2. Take each of your main ideas and brainstorm as many synonyms, related words, acronyms, initialisms, and spelling variants as you can. For example, for “climate change”: 

• Climate crisis 

• Climate emergency 

• Global heating 

• Global warming 

• Greenhouse effect 

3. Do this for each of your main ideas. Searching all the variants you can come up with will give you a broader selection of relevant information. Consider making a chart to keep track of which combinations of keywords you have searched for. 

• Get more help in choosing and using keywords.  

4. Know that there is no such thing as a perfect search. Searching is a process, so having a list of potential keywords will help you begin your research. You’ll find that different combinations of keywords will bring up different results in different databases. You can still learn something from every search you perform, so know that this list of keywords can continue to grow throughout your research process.  

• You can also use what you learn from searching to redefine your research topic or question. 

5. Several other specific search techniques can help you use your brainstormed keywords. Take a look at: 

• Search Techniques, Part 1 

• Search Techniques, Part 2 

Psychological tests are also called mental measurements, psychological instruments, psychometric tests, questionnaires, inventories, and rating scales. They can be written, visual or verbal and measure a psychological variable (personality, intelligence, etc.) There are many commercially published tests that need to be purchased and tests that are designed by researchers for specific studies.

Most clinical tests are commercially published and have restricted access, available to registered psychologists and others in health and counseling fields - full access is often unavailable to students. Our resources provide descriptive and evaluative information about the tests themselves.

APA Guide to Citing Psychological Tests

  Chat with a Librarian

Use the Chat in the lower right corner of library webpages, from 10am-4pm Monday-Friday during spring semester. Submit questions using the Email a Librarian link outside of those hours.

  Ask a Librarian

We will respond to messages within 24-48 hours Monday-Friday.

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