Students are frequently assigned to cite three empirical studies from peer-reviewed journal articles.
In this tutorial, I’ll demonstrate a quick and easy way to find them!
First, what does "peer reviewed" mean?
Peer-reviewed journals state in their front matter or on their websites
that articles are "refereed"
that articles are "refereed"
or are subject to a peer-review process
outside the editorial office or hosting institution.
Reviewers suggest changes to a manuscript
and make recommendations on whether
that manuscript should be
accepted, revised and resubmitted, or rejected.
In PsycINFO, 99% of the research
has been peer reviewed.
In fact, to be covered in PsycINFO,
journals and other scholarly research sources
must be peer reviewed.
Some journal articles included in the database
were published before peer-review guidelines
were fully developed and accepted.
The 1% of the PsycINFO database
not considered peer-reviewed material
is from historic records
that were not peer reviewed
or for which the peer-review status is unknown.
Now let's look at a search.
Note that I limited my database to just PsycINFO.
This will allow me to see search options specific to the PsycINFO database fields.
I'll start by checking "peer reviewed" and "scholarly journals."
Checking these boxes ensures that the results will be from peer-reviewed journal articles.
Now I'll type the concept I'm thinking of and take a look at the results.
These results look good! But, the assignment also requires articles to be about empirical studies. 
So, I'll click "Empirical Study" from the Methodology section.
That's all there is to it!
I'll open this first record to double-check the results.
The details in this bibliographic record show that this is a peer-reviewed journal article from an empirical study.
For more search tips and strategies, see our YouTube channel or visit the APA website. Thank you.
