Library Guides: PSYC/AFAM 589, Psychology of Hip Hop: Words into Action

Words matter

Discover how two scholars advocated to get the official spelling changed.

Iglesias, T., & Harris, T. (2022). It's "Hip Hop," Not "hip-hop". The Journal of Hip Hop Studies, 9(1), 124-125.

Hip Hop Spelling Official Statement. (2022). The Journal of Hip Hop Studies, 9(1), 126.

Email Exchange between Tasha Iglesias and American Psychological Association and Merriam-Webster. (2022). The Journal of Hip Hop Studies, 9(1), 127-128.

Brainstorm terms for key concepts

hip hop       lyrics             pedagog*          identity
hip-hop       poetry       learning                self-perception
hiphop       poetic*           teaching               self-esteem
rap                  student             self-concept
                                          achievement         self-expression
                                          memory
                                          cognition
                                             cognitive

Build a search

OR use on the same search line/in same search box for synonyms or related words

AND between search lines or boxes, narrows a search

* wildcard for different word endings psycholog* finds psychology, psychological

" " search for phrases

Are words consistently used as subject words? Focus your results by having the database look only there.

Where to search

The class is the Psychology of Hip Hop, so the major psychology database is an obvious choice. PsycInfo also has a Methodology filter you can use to limit your results to empirical studies.

Depending on your topic, there could be additional databases, but without the same filters. Strategies to make sure an article is reporting an empirical study

limit to peer-reviewed, or scholarly and scan the abstract looking for clues
try searching with words that someone might use in the abstract describing the methodology (terms are not exhaustive)
- empirical OR qualitative OR quantitative OR "action research" OR "case study" OR "controlled trial" OR "focus group" OR findings OR participant* OR investigat*

PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
The premier database for psychology and related disciplines such as medicine, psychiatry, education, social work, law, criminology, social science, and organizational behavior.
Education Source and ERIC This link opens in a new window
Combined direct access to both of the major education databases.
Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
Music Periodicals This link opens in a new window
Indexing and abstracts to international scholarly and popular music periodicals, covering the full spectrum of music topics and genres.

Find It@USC leads you to lots of different types of resources. Among them: articles, book chapters, books, dissertations, and reference entries for background (use the Resource Type filter to drill down). Find It is also your go-to place when you wonder if the library has something. First step, type in the title of the article, book, etc. If it's not found and is an article or chapter, search to see if we have the journal or book that it is in. Make an interlibrary loan request to get materials we don't have.

Find It@USC Libraries
Type the most important words in your topic into the single search box. If you use Advanced Search and use more than one term in a search box type OR in capital letters.