1. How do I search for my topic?
- 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, issues, effects, or factors are not used as tags
- Example topic: Does physical exercise have an impact on undergraduates with depression?
- Search words: exercise depression undergraduate*
- undergraduate* searches for undergraduate and undergraduates
2. I have too many search hits. How do I find what I need for my assignment?
- You can focus your search hits to:
- peer-reviewed or scholarly articles
- source type, such as journal articles, books, newspapers, or magazines
- publication date, so you get the most recent research
- Example: for your annotated bibliography, you are supposed to use peer-reviewed journal articles with current research:
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- Under Refine Results:
- check the box beside Scholarly (peer-reviewed) Journals
- move the Publication Date scroll bar over to 2000 to present
3. 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
- Example: Many of the articles are tagged with the Subject college students. Some of the articles are tagged with physical activity, while some are tagged with exercise.
- Add physical activity and college students to your search
- New Search: exercise OR "physical activity" AND depression AND "college student*" OR undergraduate*
- Use OR to combine key concepts with their synonyms within the search box
- OR finds sources tagged with any of these search words/phrases
- Use AND to combine search boxes
- AND finds sources tagged with all of the key concepts
- Subjects (tags) also help you identify the specific issues around your topic so you can give it direction and develop it into a researchable topic
4. How do I focus search hits to review articles like literature reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses?
- Under Refine Results, scroll down to Methodology and click on show more
- Check the boxes beside Literature Review, Systematic Review, and Meta-Analysis and then click on Apply
5. How do I identify Populations, Methodologies, and Tests for my research area?
- Under the Refine Results sidebar:
- click on Methodology to see a list of methodologies used
- click on Age, Gender, and Population to see a list of populations studied
- Check the box beside Adulthood to focus search hits to articles studying adults or Young Adulthood
- click on Tests & Measures to see a list of tests and measures used
- Go to Find Tests once you've chosen a test for your experiment to get the test
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 topic. What do I do?
- The search words you're using to describe your topic may not match the tags that PsycINFO or PsycARTICLES uses for your topic
- 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
