Dr. Tajuddeen A. Williams

The Walden Library

· Personal Essays

This week, a lot of the reading I have been doing has been reading has focused on leadership and the effects on their employees. For the first article, researchers tackle the issue of diversity and how a leader’s colorblindness can affect how a group functions. This is mostly with regards to the cultural minority and how they experience connectedness to the workplace and environment, and also deal with conflict (Meeussen, Otten, & Phalet, 2014). The second article focuses on leadership behavior and the well-being of their subordinates. A poor relationship between supervisors and subordinates adds to workplace stress and is characterized by low quality of communication and general feelings of stress (van Dierendonck, Haynes, Borrill, & Stride, 2004).

Finding a peer-reviewed article is not difficult when using the Walden Library. One of the easiest ways to do this is to check the “Peer Reviewed” option under “Limit your results” on the advanced search screen or “Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals” on the basic search screen. This is particularly helpful if you have a hard time determining whether an article is peer reviewed or not. Likewise, scholarly sources are typically labeled as being an academic source on the search results screen from within the library.

One way of finding out whether a journal is peer reviewed is to go to the URL for the journal. For the first article, it lists: “Group Processes & Intergroup Relations (GPIR), peer-reviewed and published bi-monthly, is a scientific social psychology journal dedicated to research on social psychological processes within and between groups. It provides a forum for and is aimed at researchers and students in social psychology and related disciplines.” Although Sage Publications willingly offer this information in plain text about the journal and its peer review status, other journals do not.

The other way to figure out whether a journal is peer-reviewed or not is by way of the audience. Typically, peer-reviewed journals are targeted towards scholars or researchers in the field (Solomon, 2007). The author is typically named, it includes references, it uses technical language, there are usually no ads, and the contents contain research with the inclusion of methodologies and theories used in the field. This differs from trade publications such as the APA Monitor on Psychology which targets people in the field, has few or no bibliographical references, no methodologies or theories, and has a glossy cover and pictures. Therefore, after reviewing the second article, it matches the former description of a peer-reviewed article more so than the latter. Both articles are geared towards scholars and researchers. Likewise, they both use technical language specifically towards the psychological field. They also include the methods used in conduction their research, who the participants were, and the results of the research. Relevant tables are included that illustrate the data and research conducted. This is important because research should be able to be replicated (Solomon, 2007).

Peer-reviewed research is professional information that is considered concise and has a high level of credibility. The highest levels of academic scholarship are adhered to by review boards and makes sure that the article is in the correct format. One goal of the peer review process is to validate the quality of the research conducted. Properly researched information is a hallmark of scholarship and it’s essential to the scholar-practitioner because it advances their profession. A lot of the work we do focus on theories that must be tested and proven true. Research, much like anything else, can be subjected to biases. Sometimes it takes a keen eye of another scholars to make sure that is not the case. Inaccurate theories can be debunked as well as false assumptions through the peer-review process and this keeps us as scholar-practitioners from releasing information that is misleading or false.

For the area of social psychology, having access to proper research that has been proven is imperative due to how often information is published. Recently, there was research published by a social psychologist that had broad implications. One piece of research was on how discrimination has serious health implications. However, in the context he was speaking about was and the method he used involved litter and the impact of the physical environment (Stapel & Lindenberg, 2011). The research has since been retracted, but several other pieces of research that came afterwards were dependent on the research of that one scholar. Likewise, news of his findings spread far and wide. My field of research affects many people other than other scholars and researchers. Research that is relevant enough to society is shared with the public. Improper research can have damaging results including the loss of money. It took another scholar to question the research and the methods that led to the findings being debunked and this led to questions about other research placed in the open.

References

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