The purpose of an academic reference source is to provide you with context for a topic with the most accepted facts and opinions about a topic and give you references to articles and books for more detailed research. These reference books can be helpful in giving you ideas and for giving you a sense of how much research has been done on a topic by scholars.
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| American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia |
Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender | Encyclopedia of Gender and Society | Encyclopedia of Human Behavior |
Articles in magazines are generally pretty interesting and readable. The reporters supply you with the context you need to understand a topic. They also refer to and quote from research and experts in a field, which you can then search on in a database to cite in your own paper.
Research is often reported in sources written so that the ideas and significance are much easier to understand (not formally presented -- as in scholarly journals).
For articles about psychology topics, these magazines are generally pretty interesting and readable::Psychology Today articles (or the Psychology Today web site), Scientific American Mind and Scientific American articles (use the "Search within this publication" link), , Psychological Science in the Public Interest , Current Directions in Psychological Science and APA Psychology Topics. Search the names of the researchers you see reported on in other databases to find more from their original papers.
