Get Started Searching PsycInfo

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Welcome!

This tutorial will guide you through searching in PsycInfo, a comprehensive international database of academic, research and practice literature in psychology, psychiatric and related topics.

You'll practice:

  • developing keywords on your topic
  • combining them to get relevant results
  • narrowing down your results to the best articles

Clicking on an underlined word or phrase will give you a definition or in-depth explanation.

Use the arrows below to navigate through the tutorial.

 

Let's Get Started!

 

Welcome!

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Directly underneath the Library Search bar, click on the Databases & Scholarly Resources link.

Welcome!

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Click on the Subjects drop-down menu, select Social Work and click Search.

Scroll down and click on APA PsycInfo

If you are off-campus you'll be asked to enter your Simmons username and password.

You are now in PsycInfo!

 

Note: If PsycInfo opens in a new tab or window, click here instead.

What are you searching for?

Now that you're in PsycInfo...

As a student as Simmons, you will have research assignments that ask you to use a certain number of sources, including scholarly articles. For example, you might be exploring the following question:

Does bullying affect decisions about substance use, and what are some of the best practices or interventions in this area?

What happens when you try searching for the whole question in the first search box?

Introducing Keywords

You'll get much better search results by using keywords, rather than trying to search using your whole question.  

Let’s revisit our research question:

Does bullying affect decisions about substance use, and what are some of the best practices or interventions in this area?

Based on the example research question, what keywords best describe the important concepts in your question?


Using Keywords

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To start a new search, click New Search in the menu at the left of your screen. 

Type "bullying substance use" in the first search box and click the Search button.

How many results do you get?


Using Keywords

2 of 5Databases don't automatically add AND between your terms like Google, but instead search literally for all the words you type in next to each other.  

Start a new search by clicking New Search in the menu at the left of your screen.

Now try searching for bullying AND substance use.

You can put all the words in one search box, or put one concept in each search box you see.

How many results do you get?

 

Using Keywords

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That's still a really small number of search results for such a big topic, so let's try to expand the search.
 
Important concepts can often be described using more than one word or phrase.  To search for one concept using multiple keywords, link them with OR.  
 
You can either use the OR in the drop down menus between search boxes or type it manually.  If you choose to type it, use parentheses to group the OR keywords together:
 
For example:
 
bullying  AND (substance OR drug )
 

Using Keywords

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Start a new search by clicking New Search in the menu at the left of your screen.
 
Using the three different search bars and the AND/OR/NOT drop-down menus, which combination of keywords results in the most relevant articles to explore the example research question:
 

Does bullying affect decisions about substance use, and what are some of the best practices or interventions in this area?

 

Using Keywords

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Sometimes it can be challenging to think of additional keywords to describe a concept. When that happens, one option is to try using the Thesaurus feature to come up with more keywords.
 
1. Click New Search in the menu at the left of your screen.
 
2. Click on Subjects in the middle of the screen.
 
3. In the search box labeled Search for terms in APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms type drug abuse and then click Search.
 
4. Drug Abuse should be the first result.  Click on it.  The terms listed include broader, narrower, related, and used for.
 

Which of these is a related term for drug abuse?

 
When you're done using the Thesaurus, click New Search in the menu at the left of your screen to get back to the search page. 
 

Keywords from Abstracts

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Another way to look for additional/alternative search terms is to read the abstracts of the first few search results you find. By doing this you'll see the vocabulary that experts in your field are using, and that can help you better target how you search.
 

Keywords and Truncation

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When using multiple, very similar keywords you don't need to type them all out.  Instead, truncate them using a * in place of the endings.
 
For example, use adolescen* instead of typing (adolescent OR adolescents OR adolescence).
 

Keywords and Truncation

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Let's try a search combining keywords and truncation.
 
In the APA PsycInfo Search box, use the three search boxes to search for the following:
 
bully*
AND 
substance* OR drug*
 
Bully and Substance or Drug Search
 

How many results did you get?

Narrowing Down the Results

Not every article in the result list is going to be relevant to your topic question, or assignment requirements.  But databases have tools called limits to help narrow down your results to the most relevant.
 
After you do a search, PsycInfo has an All Filters button that opens a Filters Panel with a full range of limiting options. Next to the All Filters button are the Quick Filters Linked Full Text, Peer Reviewed, All Time and Source Type.
 
Using the All Filters button to open the Filters Panel, narrow your results down to articles that are from the Source Type academic journals, published in the last ten years, and methodology: empirical study.
 
The search results will automatically refresh based on your selections.
 
 

How many articles meet those criteria:

Picking Which Articles to Use

You can learn a great deal about an article from its citation and abstract.
 
Within your search results, find the journal article,
"The effect of anger and family functions on bullying behavior in individuals with substance use disorder between the ages of 15 and 25."
 
Click on the title to get more information about the article.
 

What journal was it published in?

 

How many people were sampled for this study?

 
Hint: Look in the Abstract to find a summary of the purpose, methods, results, and discussion of a research study.
 

Citation Resources

Start a new search by clicking New Search in the menu at the left of your screen.
 
In the first search box, type: is there an association between adolescent bullying victimization and substance abuse?
 
Click the Search button.
 
Click on the article title to see the full record.

Citation Resources Cont.

 
On the detailed record page about the journal article, you’ll notice more information about this resource as well as some tools on the right-hand side of the page.
 
PsycInfo Cite

The Cite Button will present you with a citation for the article you are looking at in multiple citation styles. Use Copy citation to copy and paste it into a document. Use Export citation to send the article citation to a citation manager program of your choice. You can use a citation manager to generate Reference Lists and organize your article citations into folders that you can access from anywhere. See the Citation Managers guide for more information.

Remember: you are ultimately responsible for making sure the citation is correct, so don't just trust the database, confirm it using a Citation Style Handbook or other resource.

 

Getting to the Full Text

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Now that you've found what looks like a relevant article, you'd like to read the whole thing.
 
Full-text articles are available from the Access options button. They may be available as PDFs through PsycInfo, linked from other databases, or requestable through Interlibrary Loan
 
 
For this article, if you click Access options, you will see a Click here for Full Text link.
 
 

How is the article Is there an association between adolescent bullying victimization and substance abuse available?

Looking Ahead

This tutorial has introduced you to searching in PsycInfo and some of the features designed to assist your process. There are many more features and search options than covered here.
 
For example, if you're not finding enough relevant articles in PsycInfo, you can try searching in another database like SocINDEX, either by navigating back to the Library or by clicking on Searching: PsycInfo directly above the PsycInfo search box and using the checkboxes to select it.  
 
There is no wrong way to search, so keep trying new words, limits and databases!
 
If you get stuck, contact a librarian.
 
 

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