Selecting References

• Use computer literature searches, available at The Sage Colleges libraries. The librarians are willing and able to help you find the most appropriate search techniques for your topic. In addition, get advice from your instructor.
• Search for a literature review or meta-analysis that has been recently published, and read it early in your literature reading. It will help you locate relevant references. (In PsycLit, limit your search with the command "and literature review or meta-analysis" to find these.)
• Books and chapters within books may be helpful at the early stage of your literature review, to help you gain an overview of the field. Use them to organize your thoughts and plan further reading. Be reluctant to use them extensively as cited references, though; books are generally less current than journal literature reviews. In addition, you should be focusing on primary sources for most of your references.
• If you find some "classic" references in your field that many people are citing, locate them and read them in the original, so you can say something about them first-hand.
• Focus on empirical research articles in reputable professional journals. Realize that these are more difficult to read than the popular press.
• Be selective. If a reference is old, or in a foreign or relatively inaccessible journal, you should be less willing to include it in your review than a newer, more accessible article, other things being equal. Articles in popular magazines and newspapers are usually not appropriate to include, unless you are saying something about the popular press. If they report interesting research second-hand, search for the original, professional articles and read those.
• Know why you are citing each reference. Is it because of an important research finding? A method of collecting data? A clever research design? Don't try to summarize everything about each study that you read.
• Avoid citing secondary references (that is, references cited within the articles that you read). If a cited reference looks interesting, try to locate and read the original. If you must cite it as a secondary reference, make that clear to the reader of your paper. (For example, you might write "Smith (2000) describes a dissertation study by Jones (1995) in which Jones found that ....")
• If secondary sources aren't good, what about literature reviews?

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