An assignment in HLTH 4390 requires students to locate a primary research article about the health of women in a country other than the United States. A primary research article is a peer-reviewed journal article that reports on an original research study conducted by the article's authors. Once you have identified an article, read or skim the abstract and the beginning of each section in the article to ensure that it is a report on original scientific research written by the researchers themselves. An article that only summarizes or comments on research conducted by other researchers, without reporting on one specific research study, is a secondary article, NOT a primary research article. Articles with the word "review" in the title or marked as "Review" at the top margin of the first page are usually NOT primary research articles.
By their nature, primary research articles are published in scholarly peer reviewed journals. The library's JEWL Search is one place to locate peer reviewed journal articles. This handout expands on the instructions below.
1. Enter your keywords / topics.
2. On the search results page, use the filters in the left column under the "Limit To" menu:
3. Every article in your search results will not necessarily be a primary research article. Read the article abstract and skim the article's section headings to determine if this is a primary research article.