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 my research question?
- Identify the keywords of your topic and use those as your search words.
- Each book and article has tags assigned to it, words or shorts phrases that make each book or article searchable
- You want your search words to match those tags
- Words like impact, effects, effective, or causes are not used as tags
- Example topic: What risk factors are associated with violence in relationships?
- Search: relationship* AND violence AND "risk factors"
- relationship* searches for relationship and relationships
- "risk factors" searches for risk factors as a phrase, not two separate words
- AND tells the database to search for articles tagged with ALL of your search words and phrases
2. I have too many irrelevant search hits. How do I focus them?
- Use options in the Refine Results sidebar to the left of your search hits to focus them to sources more relevant to your assignment needs and more specific research areas of interest
- You can focus your search hits to:
- Academic Journals to focus to articles from peer-reviewed journals
- Source Types, such as journal articles, books, newspapers, or magazines
- Publication Date, so you get the most recent research
- Subject: Major Heading, to focus to your interest areas
- Example: for your Film Analysis, you're supposed to scientific sources (journal articles) with up-to-date research. Under Refine Results::
- check the box beside Academic Journals under Source Types to find research-based articles from peer-reviewed journals
- move the Publication Date scroll bar over to 2010 to present
3. How do I know my search words match the tags assigned to articles about my psychological concept or research question?
- As you scroll through the search hits, look at the assigned Subjects (tags), and see if they match your search words
- Example: you searched for the concept dyadic coping
- articles about dyadic coping are tagged with the subjects coping behavior and dyads
- New Search: "coping behavior" AND dyads
4. How do I preview the abstract/summary of an article from the list of search results?
- 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
5. How do I access the article so I can read the whole thing?
- Look for pdf Full Text or HTML Full Text links
- Click on the Check 360 Link for Full Text link to see if this article is available to read in other library databases
6. How do I identify articles that cite an article I've chosen?
- Web of Science: use the Web of Science database to identify articles that cite your article:
- Enter your article title and select Title from the dropdown menu by the search box
- Look for Times Cited: # to the right of your search hits - click on the number to get a list of articles that have cited your article
- Click on Full Text from Publisher to read the article
7. 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
- Ask Dr. McAuslan or your Psychology librarian, Nadine Anderson, for help
