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Explain how Sarah's method illustrates the process of a citation search. Based on the logic of this search strategy, explain why the newer works she retrieves are highly likely to be relevant to her literature review on cognitive dissonance.
Case context: Sarah is an undergraduate psychology student conducting a literature review on cognitive dissonance. Instead of performing a standard keyword search, she starts by entering the title of a classic, foundational 1957 paper on cognitive dissonance into the academic database PsycINFO. Once she finds its record, she uses the database features to link to a list of newer works that have cited it.
Question: Explain how Sarah's method illustrates the process of a citation search. Based on the logic of this search strategy, explain why the newer works she retrieves are highly likely to be relevant to her literature review on cognitive dissonance.
Sample answer: Sarah's method illustrates a citation search because she starts by locating the database record of a foundational article and then navigates forward in time by linking to newer works that cited it. The newer works are highly likely to be relevant because subsequent researchers investigating the same topic of cognitive dissonance are highly likely to reference the original classic 1957 article in their own publications.
Key points:
- Explain that Sarah uses the 1957 paper as a classic, foundational starting point to find its database record.
- Identify that she navigates forward by linking to newer works that have cited the foundational article.
- Explain the underlying logic that researchers working on the same topic are highly likely to reference the classic article in their own publications.
Rubric: The student must explain that Sarah is navigating the literature from a foundational paper forward to newer works that reference it. They must also show comprehension of the underlying logic: because subsequent researchers studying the same topic must reference the classic paper, the citing works are highly likely to cover the same psychological phenomenon.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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