Journal Evaluation - Using mental imagery to enhance intrinsic motivation

Journal Article Evaluation

Martin, K. A. & Hall, C. R. (1995). Using mental imagery to enhance intrinsic motivation. JOURNAL OF SPORT & EXERCISE PSYCHOLOGY, 17(1), 54-69.

Strategy for finding the journal article

I found the journal article during class on Monday July 14th, when everyone had to present to the class how to use the database they was given. After watching multiple people present and present myself, I was able to search through my given database and find a journal that will help my research. I found this journal under UNC Library database with searches of Health and Medicine, and typed in key words of my topic in the search category. I thought this journal would be best for my research topic from the title of the article. Using mental imagery to enhance intrinsic motivation, all these words relate to my topic and more. As saying to enhance intrinsic motivation would add more support to my topic as the title basically describes using mental imagery to enhance performance on your own.

Rationale for selection of the journal article

In the article, not only is there definitions of psychology terms but there is multiple case studies by different experts in the field. Thus, this article is more resourceful to me in my research studies.

General evaluation of the journal article

There is a great amount of experts in the field of psychology with mental imagery that give case studies they have performed and their personal opinion in the subject. The intended audience is for people or students who want to learn or become better at mentally preparing their mind to enhance their performance. The article is very relevant to the audience though it was published in 1995. Thus, the article provides information that has not yet been outdated. The evaluation method I used to evaluate the article is by purpose method. The purpose of the article is to inform people or student of information about athletic imagery, as it is also educational, persuasive, and (sometimes) personal to the audience. The audience fitted the criteria as it explained to them what mental imagery is and how you can use it to improve your performance. The primary vs. secondary criteria was effective as there is a difference explained to the audience of mental imagery used by athletes and visualization used by people in general.

Example strategies used to search within the journal article

There were titles and subtitles of every chapter in the article as it helped me find information I want to use in my research. I used words like mental imagery and visualization to narrow my search in finding information I need in the article. I would then combine these terms together with other words like athletic and psychology to narrow my search down more. Other strategies I used to find information is by reading the article that described mental imagery. All the searches I conducted came out in success as I was able to find a lot of information that was relevant for my research paper.

A brief summary of the information yielded by the journal article

The article as a whole contains information about athletes approach to mentally prepare their mind to enhance their performance. The research article contains a lot of sport psychology information that will help me produce a stronger statement in my research paper. The journal article as a whole will help me answer my question by providing me information and case studies that relate to my question.

A revised draft of your research question

Still at this point in time, I think my question is still suitable for my research paper as the journal article provided me with more information to answer my question.