Scholarly journals will often report the results of a research study and will be arranged in sections. These sections usually include an abstract, an introduction, a literature review, a methods section, a results section, a discussion section, and then a works cited list of references. Popular articles, in contrast, are usually much shorter articles that do not cite more than a few sources (if any).
If you are looking for scholarly articles, it can be helpful to look for these sections (especially the works cited section) to help you make sure that the article you found is a scholarly article and not a popular one. Most library databases will also have a way to limit your search to just scholarly articles.
Here are two examples of a popular article and a scholarly article on similar topics:
| Popular article about college students and cell phones | Scholarly article about college students and cell phones: |
| Srigley, R. (2020). Phonely Connect. MIT Technology Review, 123(1), 66–73. | Chen, Y. (2021). The effects of shyness and loneliness on cell phone dependence in college students. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 49(9), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.10668 |
| "The usual industry and education narrative about cell phones, social media, and digital technology generally is that they build community, foster communication, and increase efficiency, thus improving our lives. Mark Zuckerberg's recent reformulation of Facebook's mission statement is typical: the company aims to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." Here, Srigley relates what university students' felt without cell phones." | "I explored the relationships among shyness, loneliness, and cell phone dependence (CPD) in college students, with a special focus on the mediating effect of loneliness in the relationship between shyness and CPD. Participants were 593 students recruited from a college in Henan, China, and they completed the Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, the UCLA Loneliness Scale–Short Form, and the Mobile Phone Addiction Index. The results show that shyness was significantly correlated with both loneliness and CPD, and that loneliness partially mediated the effect of shyness on CPD. These findings shed light on how shyness predicts CPD and have implications for preventing CPD in college students." |
© Coastal Carolina University | P.O. Box 261954, Conway, SC 29528-6054 USA | +1 843-347-3161