Check out the library's self-paced tutorial How do I search library databases? to learn the basics of database searches.
1. How do I search for articles about my research question?
- Identify the main ideas/keywords of your topic and use those as your search words
- Each article in a database has assigned tags that represent their main ideas: words or shorts phrases about their main concepts that make each book or article searchable
- You want your search words to match those tags
- Words like impact, benefits, effects, or causes are not used as tags
- Example topic: Can young children learn language from watching TV?
- Main concepts: "language learning" AND TV
- Combine with AND to search for all of your concepts at once
- Putting quotation marks around "language learning" searches for it as a phrase, not separate words
- Don't add young children to the search - we'll focus to this age group in the search results
2. How do I identify the specific age groups that have been studied in my research area? How do I then focus to articles that study specific age groups, i.e. like young children from the example?
- Click on the All Filters button at the top of the list of search results to open the All Filters sidebar
- Scroll down the heading Age and click on the arrow to open a short list of age groups
- Click on Show More at the bottom of the short list to open the full list of age groups.
- Look at the Hit Count number next to each Age Group to see how many articles include people in this age group in their studies.
- Check the box(es) beside specific Age Groups to focus to articles that studied those age groups
- Example::check the box beside Preschool age (2-5 years) and then click on Apply
- This focuses the search results to articles about studies with preschool children
3. How do I identify the Age Groups studied by a specific article?
- Click on your article title in the list of search results to open the full record of the article.
- Scroll down to the Age Group heading to see the age groups that your article studied
4. I have too many irrelevant search hits. How do I focus them to my assignment requirements and research interest areas?
- Open the All Filters sidebar to find options for focusing your search results to your assignment requirements and to psychological classifications that are relevant to Cognitive Psychology
- Click on the All Filters button at the top of the list of search results to open this sidebar
- You can focus your search results to:
- Peer-Reviewed: to focus to articles from peer-reviewed journals
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- Source Types, such as journal articles, books, newspapers, or magazines
- Publication Date, so you get current research
- Subject: Major Heading, to focus to your interest areas
5. How do I know my search words match the tags assigned to articles about my research question?
- As you scroll through the search hits, look at the assigned Subjects (tags), and see if they match your search words
- Subjects (tags) also help you identify the specific issues around your topic so you can give it direction and develop it into a focused research question.
- Example: The articles are tagged with television, not TV. Articles about language learning are also tagged with vocabulary, language development, and language acquisition
- Move each concept into their own search box and use OR combine them with their synonyms
- OR tells the database to search for articles tagged with ANY of these concepts
- Revised example search:
"language learning" OR vocabulary OR "language development" OR "language acquisition"
AND TV OR television
6. How do I preview the abstract/summary of an article from the list of search results?
- Look for the abstract beneath the article title in the list of search results (click on Show More at the end of the shortened abstract to open the full abstract)
- Click on the title link to open the full article record, which includes the article abstract and other information about the article such as author affiliation and citation information
7. How do I access the article so I can read the whole thing?
- Look for the Access Options drop down menu or pdf Full Text or HTML Full Text buttons
- Click on the Check 360 Link for Full Text button to see if the article is available to read in other library databases
- If you get an error message trying to access an article, follow the troubleshooting steps to login to VPN and clear your browser cache on the Online Library Access page
8. How can I tell if an article I'm reading is an Empirical Study article or a Review article?
- Search for the article title in the above PsycINFO/PsycARTICLES search box
- Click on the Article Title in the search results (NOT the Full Text online links) to open the full record for the article.
- Scroll down to the Methodology heading in the article record
- If the methodologies listed are Empirical Study and/or Quantitative Study, it's an empirical study
- If the methodologies listed are Systematic Review and/or Meta Analysis and/or Literature Review, it's a review study
9. I can't find anything on my research question. What do I do?
- The search words you're using to describe your topic may not match the tags that PsycINFO or PsycARTICLES has assigned to books and articles on your research question
- Use the PsycINFO Thesaurus to identify the words that PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES use to describe your disorders or topics
- There may not be research tying your main ideas together yet.
- Try searching for your main ideas separately and linking their findings together
- If you've found one article that's relevant for your topic, look through the sources in its References list to see if any of them are also relevant to your research
