PsycINFO Basics

Getting started

PsycINFO

About PsycINFO

Is the key database for finding international peer reviewed literature in behavioural science and mental health. If you are studying psychology it is important to become familiar with searching in PsycINFO.Advantages:

• limits your search to relevant material
• advance features such as Subject Headings (thematic tags) and limits (e.g. age groups)
• most journal articles are peer reviewed

Compare ways of searching

Map your keyword to subject headings

Enter a keyword or phrase

Search using Subject headings

Search using Keywords

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The Advanced Search screen appears by default. Type in a word or phrase e.g. personality formation. Tick the Map Term to Subject Heading box, PsycINFO will try to match your search to subject headings from the thesaurus. If you would like to search as a keyword untick this box.Using Subject Headings is a great way to find relevant material, especially if you are unfamiliar with a topic as you don't need to know all the relevant terminology.

Searching

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If you have selected to map terms you will now see a list of subject headings that best match your search term. For our example search Personality Formation it has found these subject headings with Personality Development is the closest match.

Choosing subject headings

Click on a subject heading name to display more information including:

• What the term is used for e.g. Personality Development is used for Character Development and Character Formation
• Broader terms e.g. Psychsocial Development
• Narrower terms you can also search for all of these by clicking Explode or select individually.

Once you have selected your subject heading(s) click

Choosing subject headings

From the search results page you can view your results, conduct another search or see details about your search.See the i for more info

Search results

From the search history page use the tick box to select the searches you want to combine:

• use AND to combine 2 different concepts (results must have both terms)
• use OR to combine 2 similar concepts (results can have either terms)

Search for your second concept by repeating step 2

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Step 2

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Search for your first concept as a keyword(s) or selected subject heading

Combine searches

Learn more about PsycINFO by viewing the quick reference guide (pdf), attend an online training session or view the video.

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