SPCE 630: Research Methods for Behavior Analysis

This guide is meant to accompany SPCE 630 assignments where you need to find journal articles on a topic in applied behavior analysis.

If you've used APA PsycInfo and ERIC in the past, you'll notice that they have a new user interface.  Don't worry!  Most of the changes are intuitive, and there are some new features you'll love.

This brief video from EBSOhost (the database provider of APA PsycInfo and ERIC) highlights the use of the new interface.

When you're doing academic research, start on the Ball State University Libraries' homepage.  Then look for the Databases link.  Use the options under the "Subjects" drop-down menu to explore the available resources.

There are two principle research databases in the field of applied behavior analysis: ERIC (under the Education category) and APA PsycINFO (under the Psychology category).  Try both of them, but depending on your topic, you may find that one is more helpful than the other.

While you can use the same general search techniques in both databases, be alert for differences in terms used.

​Try using the CHOP, DROP, and OR method for constructing your search.  It allows you to cast your net wide, so you bring up literature which might be related to your topic -- closely or tangentially -- so that you can consider it.

Here is an example of how that might work:

If my topic is "What are the ethical considerations involved with having care provided for the child with autism in an interdisciplinary manner?"

• I'd first chop my topic up into these three areas:
  • ethics
  • autism
  • interdisciplinary

• Then I'd drop each into a search box, like this:

• And then I'd use or between synonyms and related words.  It's also helpful to think of word variants, like ethics and ethical. So my search would look like this:

• I could improve my results further by looking at the records of articles I pull up which seem on-topic, such as this one:

• The highlighted terms above can be worked into a revised search like this, putting related terms in the same box with OR in between:

• Looking at my results, I may determine that I need to remove some of my search terms or add in others.  This can take some time. 
• Bear in mind that you're unlikely to come up with a list of records where every single title is useful.  Also, unlike in Google searching, the articles that work for you may not be on the first page of results.  Be willing to dig down!

What if you need to find articles which are empirical studies, based on data?  Here are some tips:

Signs an article you find is data-based:

• it says it uses participants
• it includes these headings within the article: Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, and Discussion/Conclusion.

• Go to APA PsycInfo and type in the terms you want to search on.
• Under the search boxes, you'll see "Filters" as a choice, with many ways you can limit your results.

• There's a Methodology limiter toward the bottom, where you can choose either EMPIRICAL STUDY or QUANTITATIVE STUDY.  Both of those methodology types include data in them.

Unfortunately, few other databases allow you to place this kind of "Methodology" limiter, so it's on you to look for the signs, mentioned above if you're using a different database.  Often just reading the abstract will make it clear that the study design is based on data, though, so it's not too difficult.