Discussion 1: Scholarly Sources and the Walden Library
Scholarly information comes from a wide variety of sources including academic books, encyclopedias, handbooks, and journals. “Scholarly” is a broad term for publications written by and for researchers and scholars. These publications are typically not found in your local bookstore or public library because they are written for a very specific audience. They are mostly available in university and specialized libraries, not freely available online. This is why it is essential to learn to navigate the Walden Library and use it often!
During your time at Walden, you will be focusing on peer reviewed journal articles, a specific type of scholarly publication that goes through a specialized review process. These types of articles may report on original research or review the work of other researchers.
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Get Help Now!As you use the Walden Library to search the peer reviewed literature to support your discussion posts and assignments, it is important to understand how the Library is organized. Most modern libraries make their materials available electronically through searchable databases. Here in the Walden Library, you have access to specialized academic databases, many of which are specific to psychology and the social and behavioral sciences.
As part of this week’s Discussion, you will explore the databases in the Walden Library and compare and contrast peer reviewed articles found in these databases to those found online.
To prepare for this Discussion:
- Review Learning Resources for this week and familiarize yourself with navigating the Walden Library, searching Library databases, and limiting your searches to full text, peer review, and publication date.
- Search the “APA PsycINFO database” in the Walden Library and locate a peer reviewed article on a psychology topic you would like to explore relevant to your area of specialization in your program.
- Next, search the Internet and locate an article related to the same topic.
- Reflect on the sources of both articles, and evaluate each article using the evaluation methods listed in the Learning Resources.
With these thoughts in mind:
By Day 3
Post a brief description of the articles you found. Next, compare and contrast the articles and explain the differences you noticed between them. Further explain how the use of peer review articles will improve the arguments in your scholarly writing. As a professional in the field of psychology, which article would you use as evidence to support your ideas? Provide the article title and journal name for the article you find in the Library and the URL for the article you found online.
Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to this week’s Learning Resources.
For my peer-reviewed article, I chose to look into the topic of treatment effectiveness in Veterans with PTSD. The peer-reviewed article I found through the Walden online library, “A Preliminary Examination of a Posttraumatic Growth-Based Program for Veteran Mental Health”, discusses the varying factors in treatment of Veterans struggling with PTSD and their effectiveness. The article discussed that current treatments for PTSD in Veterans have proven effective but there are some issues such as the patient terminating the treatment early and/or only experiencing a slight improvement with their symptoms but not fully being able to overcome their PTSD and/or acute stress disorder symptoms. Furthermore, PTSD oftentimes is found to show some comorbidity with other mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety (Moore, Tedeshi, & Greene, 2021, p. 43). There are a variety of evidence-based interventions that veterans can participate in such as exposure therapy and EMDR, which are more specific to PTSD treatment, and nonspecific therapies such as stress inoculation training and present-centered therapy (Moore, et. al., 2021, p. 43). If the patient chooses not to participate, there are specific medications which can be utilized to treat the symptoms of PTSD. Furthermore, there are other alternatives to medication and therapies such as programs for patients to participate in, one such being Warrior PATHH. In this program, it is based upon the theory of post-traumatic growth, which is defined in the article as “…positive psychological changes can occur in the aftermath of difficult life experiences, specifically in the areas of personal strength, relating to others, new possibilities, appreciation of life, and spiritual/ existential matters” (Moore, et. al., 2021, p. 44).
The second article in which I found on Google titled “Effective Treatment of Veterans with PTSD: Comparison between intensive and daily and weekly EMDR approaches”, discusses the usage of EMDR therapy and its effectiveness based upon the intensity in which it is utilized. The article discusses the statistics of PTSD in Veterans as well as the impacts that EMDR therapy might have on the improvement in symptoms of PTSD. The article goes on to discuss a study in which a group of patients with PTSD participated in EMDR therapy two times a day for a ten day period and a group in which patients with PTSD participated in EMDR therapy 18-20 times throughout a 5-6 month period. Both groups appeared to have made improvement when re-assessed for symptoms of PTSD but it appears that more intensive EMDR therapy could have the potential to decrease PTSD symptoms and assist the patient on a deeper level.
In review of both articles, I feel that both pose valid information, however, I think that I would lean more-so towards the information from the peer-reviewed article. I feel that the peer-reviewed article contained more information as well as contained information on a variety of therapy and non-therapy based treatments for PTSD as well as important, up to date statistics regarding PTSD within Veterans as it was the most recent published as opposed to the Google search article, which was published in 2018. I think that it is very important to look for the most up-to-date information as well as find peer-reviewed articles so that I have the most accurate information. While Google is a helpful tool, it might not always possess the most accurate answers or articles. As a professional, I would more than likely use the first article as it possesses a broad amount of information on a variety of treatments, while the second only focused upon one particular treatment.
References:
Moore, B. A., Tedeschi, R. G., & Greene, T. C. (2021). A preliminary examination of a posttraumatic growth-based program for veteran mental health. Practice Innovations, 6(1), 42–54. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1037/pri0000136
Hurley, E. C. (1AD, January 1). Effective treatment of veterans with PTSD: Comparison between intensive daily and weekly EMDR approaches. Frontiers. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01458/full.
Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.
By Day 5
Respond to two of your colleagues and continue the discussion through Day 7. When researching a topic, often leads to another. Choose one of your colleague’s posts and search the Walden Library databases to locate another peer reviewed article on the same topic as your colleague’s article. Describe the article you found and why it might be of interest to your colleague. Include the name of the database where you found it (i.e., APA PsycINFO, etc.) and further provide the citation to the article in APA format (author, publication, year, article title, journal title, and volume/issue/page numbers).
Hi Hannah. I also find this topic particularly interesting and I actually had some fun researching an article to share with you for this response. I think that it is safe to say that treatment for PTSD is not completely effective yet, and there are definitely some modifications that need to be made. An article from APA PsycInfo that I found actually evaluated the effectiveness of evidence-based treatments for PTSD. Doran and DeViva (2018) state that engagement and retention rates are surprisingly low in the VA, despite the widespread available of treatments for PTSD. Additionally, even after veterans receive initial treatment, the study found that a majority of veterans receive follow up treatment for their PTSD and many participate in forms of individual therapy (Doran & DeViva, 2018).
I think that therapy, especially for something related to trauma, is a practice that is often defined as one-and-done. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. It may take a while to find a type of therapy that works best for you, and you might have to look around at different therapists to find one that connects with you. It seems that the study came to the same conclusions. This topic is fascinating though!
Doran, M. J., & DeViva, J. (2018). A naturalistic evaluation of evidence-based treatment for veterans with PTSD. Traumatology, 24(3), 157-167. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000140
sample post 2
Perfectionism is a common train found in athletes of all ages. This level of perfectionism can lead to stress and eventual burnout, especially at the college level where students are often dependent on their performance in order to maintain a spot at the chosen school or university. To find more information about levels of stress in athletes that could potentially lead to burnout, I found the first article from Walden University’s Library PsycInfo Database. The second article was founded using a simple Google search.
The peer reviewed article would be more scholarly in the sense that the authors would be much more reliable, and the references and sources would also be from other reliable authors. The peer reviewed article would be able to share the findings from the other reliable sources via citations to help with the dependability of their article. It appears that the internet article is more of a trade publication than a peer reviewed-scholarly article (Walden, 2015). The internet article only had a few references and while it was written by a professional in the field of Sports Psychology, the article was not peer reviewed nor was it published by an academic or professional organization (Walden, 2015). In contrast, the peer review article is published by an academic journal and has a startling 73 references at the end of their article. The authors also focus specifically on the relationships between stress, burnout, and perfectionism in college athletes, unlike the internet article which has more informative and more how-to-help sections than research findings (Walden, 2015).
The peer reviewed article I found by Garinger, Chow, & Luzzeri (2018) focused heavily on the relationships between stress, perfectionism, and burnout in athletes at the college level. I noticed that Garinger, Chow, and Luzzeri (2018) did not hold back on the perceived intellectual level of their readers. They defined specific tests and terminology that they wanted readers to be more familiar with, but clearly expected that their overall audience would be of a certain intellectual level. Garinger, Chow, and Luzzeri (2018) were writing and sharing the results they found during their research which resulted in definitive, research-based reasons behind athlete burnout and stress. After stating a fact or a finding that had been found, the authors made sure to correctly cite and reference all of the articles that had shared the same information. Additionally, this article has a much more focused topic that is discussed throughout the entire article. The authors focus specifically on the relationships between stress, burnout, and perfection in college athletes.
The internet article I found by Gunter (2021) simultaneously discussed reasons for athlete stress and how to manage symptoms for it. In contrast to the peer-reviewed article, Gunter’s article was posted on a website that is accessible to the public and their writing, while still informational, was much more defined and easily understandable to the general public. Gunter (2021) approached the relationship more clinically by describing potential symptoms of stress and burnout in athletes and different methods people can use to combat the stress. The internet article approaches stress and athletes on a much broader scale, including things like symptoms and management while also discussing a generalized group of athletes experiencing stress.
The peer reviewed article approaches the topic critically and intellectually. The internet article is written for the general public, and this the author leaves out crucial points and topics about the relationships between athletes and their burnout. The peer review article goes into great detail about the psychological understanding of stress and burnout that the internet article does and can not because it is meant for the public, not a specific audience. The peer reviewed article is scholarly because of the number of references and citations within the article, the fact that it was published by an academic and peer-reviewed journal, the academic structure of the article, and the way the authors have a focused and narrow scope of informative facts.
Garinger, L., Chow, G., & Luzzeri, M. (2018). The effect of perceived stress and specialization on the relationship between perfectionism and burnout in collegiate athletes. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 31(6), 714-727. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2018.1521514
Gunter, K. (2021). Managing stress in sport. Gunter Psychological Services. https://drkensagunter.com/hello-world/
Walden University. (2015). Publication comparison chart: publication. Walden University Library. https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/library/peerreviewvsscholarly
Discussion 1: Scholarly Sources and the Walden Library
