Using PsycINFO Effectively and Expertly

PsycINFO is the main index used for locating articles within Psychology scholarly publications. PsycINFO offers a variety of search options - from a broad keyword search to a high degree of control in searching. You'll have more success with your searching when you understand the options available.

PsycINFO Records

A record describes an item in the database. PsycINFO records are citations - descriptions of articles, conference proceedings, or book sections. A citation includes the title of the item, the authors, the affiliation of the authors (where they work), the source (where it was published), and descriptors. Usually there's also an abstract, which describes the article. Information at the bottom of the record often includes details about the study: the agegroup studied, the type of study, tests used, etc. Most of this information is searchable with keywords.

Here is a screen shot of the beginning of a full record:

This is a record for a journal article published in 2011, in volume 33, issue 1 of the journal Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. The screen shows you which database you're searching. There's an option to mark each item for exporting to RefWorks, saving, printing, or emailing. A complete citation is provided, as well as a link to to find the full article. Sometimes there are other links to full text as well.

Further down, the citation includes other important information such as the abstract, the type of study, the document type (journal, book, peer-reviewed, etc.), and where the authors work. It's a long record with a great deal of useful information.

There's more information on the right side of the record, designed to help you limit your results or find more items. These are covered below.

Short Record on Results List

When we search PsycINFO our results are first presented in short form, so that many can fit on a screen. The Results list provides a lot of information and options:

• Click on the title of an item or "Citation/Abstract" to get the full record.
• Change the order in which the results are displayed under "Sort results by". The default is by date, with the most recent first, but you can change it to show the most relevant first. (Sometimes this is not helpful at all because the computer isn't always good at knowing what's most relevant.)
• Create a sub-set of your current results using "Narrow results by". Narrow to a particular journal, subject, methodology, language, date, etc.
• Select one or more items to Export (to RefWorks), Save, Print, or Email.

All of these options are presented on the Results screen. Here's what it looks like:

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Basic Search

A basic search searches for our keywords in the title, author, abstract, subjects, or full text of the references of an article. If you've assigned your own tags to an item, it will search those too. See the ProQuest Help page for Basic Search if you'd like more details.

It's a very broad search that often finds many items of limited value. The only control you have with this search is to limit your findings to "Peer reviewed" or "Scholarly journals".

Sometimes this is a good way to get started, and we can get ideas from our results to help us narrow down our search. However, we can control our results better by using a more specific "Advanced Search".

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Advanced Search

An advanced search provides several search boxes, each allowing us to specify where we want our keywords to appear (what field they're in). This helps control the relevancy of our results. Click on the arrow to select locations to search: author, title, subjects, abstract, affiliation, etc. There are many choices.

The default is "All Fields (CABS)" of each record. These search boxes can be joined with AND, OR, or NOT. (See the Keywords tutorial for an explanation of these operators.)

Every record in PsycINFO has a classification code - a code used to categorize a document according to the primary subject. These classification codes can help us target our search by searching within a specific category.

The Advanced Search also provides us with a large selection of limitations that allow us to specify exactly what we need to find. We can limit a search by:

• Peer reviewed, Scholarly journals, or items added in the Latest update
• Locations (using a list that opens when we click on "Look up Locations")
• Tests and Measures used in the study (using a list provided)
• Record Type: ie. Peer-Reviewed Article, Book, Chapter, Dissertation, Conference Proceeding, Letter, Bibliography, etc.
• Methodology: ie. Field Study, Focus Group, Interview, Literature Review, etc.
• Supplemental Data: ie. Audio, Tables, Video, etc.
• Language (the language of the article - they aren't always in English!)
• Age Group (of the study subjects)
• Target Audience
• Population: ie. Male, Human, Animal, etc.

All of these are available on the Advanced Search page. Here's a screen capture of the limiters:

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Subject Terms

PsycINFO offers detailed searching through a controlled vocabulary of subject terms . A controlled vocabulary is a specified list of terms that can be used to describe an item. In this case the terms are controlled by the publisher (PsycINFO) and applied consistently by scholarly staff who read the item and determine which terms should be applied. This is significant because we can be confident that the same terminology is applied in the same way to each article, and it links relevant items.

To find a reliable subject term, use the Thesaurus provided on the right side of the search screen. Enter a word appropriate for your topic and you'll get a list of potential subject terms to use.

The thesaurus tells us if the term we entered is an acceptable subject. It explains what each subject terms means and how it's used. It also provides a list of:

• Broader terms,
• Narrower terms, and
• Related terms.

Here's a screen capture of a thesaurus search:

Subject Terms can be helpful in other ways. When we perform a search, at the top of the results screen there's a list of "Suggested Subjects". These terms are meant to help us better define a search. Clicking on one of these performs a new search.

We can also narrow our results using Subject Terms by clicking on "Subject" at the right side of the results screen and selecting a particular subject term. This shows us ONLY the items from our existing search results which have this subject term. The number beside each term tells us how many items from our search results have this term.

Here's a screen capture:

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Search History, RSS Feed, and Alerts

Sometimes we do so many different searches that we lose track of what we've done. At the top of the screen there's a link to "Recent Searches" that shows all the searches we've done in this session and how many items were found with each search. Use this feature to combine search results or review the results found previously.

PsycINFO also allows us to Save searches so that they're there the next time we login. For this feature we need to create an account for ourselves, which we're prompted to do when we click "Save".

When a search is saved, it can be run again later or an alert can be created. An alert is a search that's run automatically every week and any new items found are sent in an email.

An RSS feed for your current search, or for a publication title, serves the same purpose as an alert, letting you know when new matching documents, or a new issue are available in ProQuest. However, an RSS feed gives you more flexibility of access. Instead of only being delivered by email, you can integrate your RSS feed into an RSS reader or into a Web page. When you create an RSS feed, ProQuest provides you with a link that you can add to an RSS reader—such as the one built into Microsoft Outlook—or integrate into your own webpage. Clicking the link at any time will display the most current matching search results.

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Last Modified: July 13, 2011
Maintained by , Thomas J. Bata Library.