Using
PsycInfo/PsycArticles through EBSCOhost
PsycINFO, produced
by the APA (American Psychological Association) is the primary index to
psychological literature. It provides
indexing and abstracts for over one million articles in 1,700 journals from over
50 countries and also includes abstracts for dissertations, books and book
chapters ranging in date from 1887 to the present. Many of the more current articles will be
available full-text. For
those citations with no full-text, check to see if
PsycArticles is a much
smaller database than PsycInfo, but all of the
articles in it are full-text. It covers
53 journals from 1985 to the present. If
you use PsycInfo, you will be linked to the full-text
articles in PsycArticles.
1. Go to North Park University
Library’s homepage (http://www.northpark.edu/library)
2. At the library’s homepage, click on
“Databases/Articles.”
3. Choose Databases A-Z or Databases by
Subject.
4. Select PsycInfo (this includes all full-text in PsycArticles)
5. Enter a search term in the Find box. The results will tell you if
the library has the journal that is being cited. You can also restrict your search to:
·
Publication Type: by selecting Journal Articles you can eliminate books, dissertations, and
reports from your results.
·
Form/Content Type: limit to empirical study, clinical
trial, literature review, etc.
6. Click on the Thesaurus at the top of the screen to find the best search terms for your subject. You
can also look at the “subjects” of a record to find more terms. (Note: The thesaurus is available only on PsycInfo, not PsycArticles.)
7. The Advanced Search tab on the menu at the top of the screen gives you
more search options.
8. When you see your results list,
click on the highlighted title of the article in order to read an abstract
(summary) of the article.
“Full Text” or “Linked Full Text” allows you to read the
full-text article. Click on the link to
get the article. Sometimes you may click
on several links to get to the actual article.
9. You can print or e-mail your
results.
·
Keep it simple. Begin
your search by entering one or two important terms. You can add more terms to
narrow your search.
·
Use the Advanced Search to combine terms in different
fields.
·
Use the Subjects
in a journal record to find other terms to use in your search.
·
Expand your search by connecting similar words with “or” and
limit your search by connecting words with “and”
Sample APA article citation:
Demarest, J. & Allen, R. (2000) Body
image: Gender, ethnic, and age differences. Journal
of Social Psychology 140,
465-472.
SAMPLE SEARCH Using PsycInfo
Go to the PsycInfo database on the Library website.
1.
Find
some articles about body image. In the find box, type body image. Click on Search.
How many results did you find? ___________
2.
Let’s limit this search to just journal articles as opposed to book
chapters and dissertations. Click on the
tab that says “Refine Search” and open the dialogue box by “Publication
Type.” Select “Journal Article.” How many results do you have now?
_____________
3.
Let’s limit this search to body image and old people. Click on the tab that says “Refine Search.”
and add the words: and elderly.
How many articles are there when you search for body image and elderly?
4.
When
I click on one of these records and look at the subject descriptors I see that PsycInfo uses the word “aged” instead of “elderly” to
describe this population. Repeat the
search, using body image and aged. How
many results do you get now? _________
5.
Now
let’s limit this search to only those articles published since 1998. Click on the tab that says “Refine Search.”
In the Year of Publication boxes enter the years 1998 and 2004. Combine this
search with the above searches. How many
articles are there? ______________
6.
North
Park does not have all the journals that are indexed in PsycInfo,
so let’s limit this search to only those journals that
Finding the articles: