Clinical Psychology

You're interested in the psychological impact of COVID. This is a very broad topic and reading and studying previous research will help you find a focus. 

Let's explore the topic by utilizing different types of resources as detailed below. This method can also be applied to any topic you choose. For additional research help, please contact Young-Joo Lee at YLEE214@gmu.edu. 

Search the Mason catalog, using search term "resilience".  You will get these many results. 

To find results from reference books  such as encyclopedias, use the filter on the left and "Reference Entries" under Resource Type. 

Even with this filter applied you're still likely to get many returned results. Pay attention to the title of each source and choose those that seem most relevant. Below are examples of titles worth checking out further.

• “Resilience” in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Abnormal and Clinical Psychology (2017)
• “Resilience” in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Marriage, Family, and Couples Counseling (2016)
• “Resilience”  in Encyclopedia of Adolescence (2018)

The outbreak of the pandemic was in 2020. Since it takes much longer time to publish a book than a journal article, there won't be an overwhelming number of books about COVID. Let's try a simple search with the terms "resilience AND covid". Upon browsing the results, you will find that some deal with economic resilience, which is important but not relevant to your topic. Let's add another keyword "psychological" to refine the search. You may view those search results here. 

To limit the results to only in book format, choose Books as the Resource Type from the list of filters. 

You may view the search results that include this additional filter here. As you can see, there are now less than 100 results to browse. Below are some examples:

• Vos, J. (2021). The Psychology of Covid-19: Building Resilience for Future Pandemics. London: Sage.
• Khader, M. (2021). How to Prepare for the Next Pandemic : Behavioural Sciences Insights for Practitioners and Policymakers. NJ: World Scientific.
• Louis, D. (2022).  COVID-19 and Psychology in Malaysia : Psychosocial Effects, Coping, and Resilience. London: Routledge.

To find journal articles, your search has to be more specific. 

Research question: How does family resilience affect the psychological impact of life during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Source: PsycInfo

Search terms: resilience AND covid AND family 

(To replicate the search results, click here first. Once you get the search results, check "Academic Journals" under the Source Type filter on the left.)

Examples: Below are some promising ones. 

• Perry, K. J., Penner, F., Contreras, H. T., Santos, R. P., & Sarver, D. E. (2023). A US national study of family resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 32(6), 1627–1642.
• Wong, D. F. K., Lau, Y. Y., Chan, H. S., & Zhuang, X. (2022). Family functioning under COVID-19: An ecological perspective of family resilience of Hong Kong Chinese families. Child & Family Social Work, 27(4), 838–850.
• Masten, A. S. (2021). Family risk and resilience in the context of cascading COVID-19 challenges: Commentary on the special issue. Developmental Psychology, 57(10), 1748–1754.