Getting background information willl help you better understand your topic and important concepts.

Handbooks
Our library subscribes to over 100 APA handbooks. These resources will provide you with a good overview of a specific area in psychology.

Some examples:

• Handbook of child psychology
• Handbook of community psychology 
• APA Handbook of psychology and juvenile justice

To search for a handbook in a specific area, simply do a search in the library search tool Omni using the keywords "handbook" followed by the specific area in psychology such as for example:  handbook and "social psychology"

Encyclopedias

• The Sage encyclopedia of theory in psychology
• The Corsini encyclopedia of psychology
• International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Encyclopedia of the history of psychological theories

Dictionaries

• APA college dictionary of psychology 
• APA dictionary of psychology
• The Cambridge dictionary of psychology

E-book collections

• PsycBOOKS
• Taylor & Francis eBooks
• Springer eBooks

The following are a few resources that may help you with your research:

Research methods
To find books on research in psychology, do a subject search in the library search tool Omni using one of the following subject headings:
psychology - research
psychology, experimental
human experimentation in psychology

SAGE Research Methods

Here are a few examples of current books in our collection that may be relevant:
Books

• Towards a more perfect psychology: improving trust, accuracy, and transparency in research (2017)
• A new narrative for psychology (2017)
• Analysing qualitative data in psychology (2016)
• Practicing research: Why you're are part of the research process even when you think you're not (2016)
• The qualitative vision for psychology (2016)
• Creating models in psychological research (2015)
• Online research methods for psychologists (2015)
• Research and evaluation in education and psychology​ (2015)
• Longitudinal analysis : modeling within-person fluctuation and change (2015)
• Oxford handbook of quantitative methods (2015)
• APA dictionary of statistics and research methods (2014)
• Nonparametric statistics for applied research (2014)
• Straightforward statistics: understanding the tools of research (2014)
• Research methods and statistics in psychology (2014)
• APA handbook for research methods in psychology (2012)
• Research methods in psychology : investigating human behavior (2012)
• Handbook of research methods for studying daily life (2012)

Videos

• Non-experimental research methods (2017)
• Behind the statistics (2017)
• Key issues in psychological research (2017)
• Ethics in psychological research (2013)
• Psychology research in context (2008)
• Experimental research methods in psychology (2008)
• Exploring qualitative methods (2006)

Psychological tests (guides)

• Tests in print & Mental measurement yearbook (online)

This resource will allow you to find a test that is appropriate to your research application. Here is a description:
The Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY) provides users with a comprehensive guide to contemporary testing instruments. MMY also contains descriptive information (e.g., test purpose, publisher, pricing) and edited review(s) written by leading content area experts. This resource also includes the complete Tests in Print database. Tests in Print (TIP) serves as a comprehensive bibliography to all known commercially available tests that are currently in print in the English language.