New full-text journals on PsycARTICLES...

...have just been added, including some special issues. Further information is available on the following page on the APA website: http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/news/2013/08/new-from-apa.aspx. Don't forget that all PsycARTICLES content is available to UEL students and staff through our subscription to EBSCO PsycINFO.

Did you know? Official EBSCO PsycINFO tutorials...

...can now be found on the APA website: http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/training/tutorials.aspx. Make sure you choose the EBSCOhost option (it defaults to APA PsycNET) and you can then watch video walkthroughs of how to do various types of search, including advanced searches such as author affiliation and classification codes.

A new journal on PsycARTICLES...

...is about to be made available. It is called "Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal" and they promise access to all the latest issues. Although UEL has previously had access to it via Academic Search Complete, it has always come with a full-text 'embargo' on the last 12 months. As well as the latest issues, PsycARTICLES promise that in 2013 all back issues to Volume 1 will be made available. Furthermore, they are promising six more new journal titles in 2013. More details as I get them...
Don't forget that all PsycARTICLES publications can be accessed via EBSCO PsycINFO.

Two new journals on PsycARTICLES / PsycINFO...

...are now available: ‘Law and Human Behavior’ and ‘Peace and conflict: journal of peace psychology’. Further details on both titles are available from the following news story on the APA website: http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/news/2012/03/psycarticles-new-journals.aspx.

The new 2012 release of PsycINFO…

…has now gone live on EBSCO. New features include a revised version of the thesaurus (including 73 new terms and 51 new ‘used for’ terms), a new searchable field (grants/sponsorship – enabling you to identify any financial backing behind an article), a new methodology (‘scientific simulation’) and the ability to use PubMed IDs to find many articles. Similar updates to PsycARTICLES should go live very soon.

For further information about any of these features, please contact your Subject Librarian.

PsycINFO News...

...is a quarterly publication from the APA (American Psychological Association) available for free from their website: PsycINFO News. As the people behind the PsycINFO database, no-one is better enabled than them to offer the latest updates and the best tips and tricks. It also has an optional RSS feed to help you keep up-to-date with the latest issue.

Stop words...

…are found in all search engines, from library databases (such as EBSCO PsycINFO) to web search tools such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!. They are words which the search engine will ignore because they are simply too common. For example, ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘if’ and ‘but’ will not be searched for. Normally this poses no problem, but what if you are searching for a specific phrase, such as ‘children in care’ or ‘vitamin A’? Well, on some databases the use of speech marks resolves the issue e.g. “children in care”, while others, such as Google, are clever enough to realise that the ‘a’ in ‘Vitamin A’ is a key component of what you are looking for. However, many databases, including those found on EBSCO, will ignore the stop word regardless of whether speech marks are included – there is no way to force the search engine to look for that word. Slowly but surely the people who make these search tools are recognising the problems this can cause and making changes – the Web of Knowledge database has recently abolished all stop words – but if you are using a search engine which hasn’t yet made this change, then the best advice is simply to find alternative terms or descriptions for what you are looking for.

Search history on EBSCO databases...

…such as PsycINFO, is a lot more useful and powerful than you might at first realise. For a start, it is a helpful way of remembering which search terms / search combinations you have already tried. It will show how many results each search gave you and you can quickly determine which words and phrases are giving you the best results. For more advanced searchers – for example, if you are currently doing a literature review for your dissertation or thesis – it can be a powerful way of building your searches.

Building searches is much like putting up a building. Firstly you acquire your building materials (i.e. a collection of individual words and phrases) and only once you have got the raw materials do you then put them together. For example, if you are searching for information on autistic young males in special education you would begin by producing separate lists of words and phrases for autistic (e.g. autism, ASD, developmental disorders), young males (e.g. boys, infants, adolescents) and special education (e.g. special needs, special education students, special schools). You would then search for these words or phrases individually (one at a time), and then, using the search history, see which specific words or phrases bring up the most / best results and then use that information to guide you in how best to combine them e.g. developmental disorders AND young males AND special schools. The search history will then keep a record of what does and doesn’t work and enable you to search in a logical and systematic way.

Visual search on EBSCO databases…

…may prove to be a very helpful tool if you are a visual learner. The option can be found beneath the main search box in any EBSCO database (such as PsycINFO). To make the most of it, I would suggest starting with a very simple search (e.g. interpersonal relationships) and following the screens from there. The way it works, is that it picks up the most common terms related to your search and presents them in a visual list. You click on one of these (e.g. ‘attachment behavior’) and it then presents you with another list, this time of the most common terms within the results for that phrase. You can keep clicking on these terms until you hone it down to exactly what you are looking for. At each stage the trail you have following is displayed visually, so you can backtrack and take alternative routes. If that all sounds a bit complex, then please give it a go – it is much easier to use than it is to explain!!!

Language options...

…are now available on all EBSCO databases, including PsycINFO. Simply select the ‘Languages’ menu from the top right of the screen and choose your language. Everything within EBSCO (except, unfortunately, the article records themselves) will then be translated, making searching much easier, if English is not your first language.

Journals coverage on PsycINFO...

...now extends to over 2,480 titles, covering all fields of psychology and counselling, as well as the related areas of coaching and guidance. The APA website provides a full list of all journal titles indexed by PsycINFO. The list is regularly updated, but if you want to keep really up-to-date, then they also provide a list of recently added titles which don't yet appear on the complete list. PsycINFO is, of course, primarily an index of journal articles (you can use Find an e-Journal to see if we have full-text at UEL). However, there is also a list of full-text titles available from PsycARTICLES, with all of these full-text journals being automatically included in PsycINFO (so there is no need to search both databases!).

Using the 'refine your results' options in PsycINFO...

...can greatly increase the number and quality of results you find. As an example, let's imagine we are looking for articles about aggressive behaviour in teenage girls. You could try running searches for 'aggressive behaviour and teenage girls' (which currently finds just 12 results), 'aggressive behaviour and adolescent girls' (162 results) and so on. However, to really dig down into PsycINFO you need to make use of the options available to refine your search. In this example, the route to better results is to run a search for 'aggressive behaviour' (which finds over 29000 results) and then refine your search using the 'limiters' which appear to the left of the results list. First, click on 'gender' from the list of limiters and choose 'female'. This reduces your list to around 8000 results, all of which cover aggressive behaviour among females. Next, choose the 'age' limiter and select 'adolescence (13-17)'. This then finds just over 2100 results, all about aggressive behaviour in teenage girls. That's just about 2000 more than your original searches found!

Advice on getting more out of PsycINFO...

…is, of course, available from UEL library. Check out the downloadable guide or contact me directly. APA, the people who produce PsycINFO, also offer some support, including some very helpful videos which guide you through some of the main features. They are available to view on YouTube and can be found by either heading to: http://www.youtube.com/user/PsycINFO and choosing the EBSCO videos, or by running a search on YouTube for: EBSCO PsycINFO.

Going beyond PsycINFO with ScienceDirect...

... is highly recommended. Although PsycINFO is an excellent source of journal articles, the library also offers access to other databases which cover psychology. ScienceDirect is perhaps the best of these, containing well over 200 psychology journals, with 128 available with immediate full text access. ScienceDirect can be accessed from the A-Z list on the ‘e-journals and databases’ page on the library website.

To search ScienceDirect specifically for articles published in psychology journals, click on the green ‘search’ button to go to the full search screen. After entering your search terms, you should then select ‘psychology’ from the subject listing before running the search. This will restrict your results to articles from psychology journals. If you want to browse the available psychology journals on ScienceDirect, then select ‘psychology’ from the browse section on the ScienceDirect home page.

Improve your PsycINFO searches with the thesaurus...

...which can be accessed by clicking on the ‘thesaurus’ link in the blue bar at the top of the PsycINFO search and results screens. The thesaurus can help improve your searches in two ways. Firstly, it can help suggest alternative terms to search with, much like a traditional thesaurus, and will often suggest broader and narrow terms, too. For example, if you search the thesaurus for amnesia, then it suggests ‘memory disorders’ as a broader term, ‘retrograde amnesia’ as one of several narrower terms, and ‘forgetting’ as a related term. Secondly, it can help identify the ‘correct’ terminology to use to find articles on that topic. For example, if you search the thesaurus for cognitive dysfunction, it tells you to use ‘cognitive impairment’, while if you search for student protest, it tells you to use ‘student activism’. By using the terminology it suggests, you are likely to find better, more focused results because the terminology suggested is the language used by PsycINFO to organise and index all of its articles.

Three new journals on PsycARTICLES...

...have been added since the start of 2010. They are:

• GeroPsych: The Journal of Gerontopsychology and Geriatric Psychiatry
• Journal of Personnel Psychology
• Nordic Psychology

A brand new journal, "Psychology of violence", will launch in January 2011 and a special promotional issue is now available on PsycARTICLES.

To access any of these new journals, sign in to PsycARTICLES via EBSCO (follow the 'e-journals and databases' link from the library homepage) and then choose the 'publications' option at the top of the PsycARTICLES search screen. Remember that all PsycARTICLES journals are also automatically added to PsycINFO.

Teenagers vs. adolescents, counsellors vs. counselors...

...women vs. gender – which would you pick as your search terms?

The words you type in the search box on the library catalogue, PsycINFO, Google or any other search screen can make a huge difference to the results you find. Take the first example: teenagers vs. adolescents. Look them up in a dictionary or thesaurus and you will probably conclude that they are interchangeable and you could use either. However, look them up in PsycINFO and ‘teenagers’ returns less than 5000 results, while ‘adolescents’ returns a staggering 143,000 results. Why? Because ‘adolescents’ is a more academic term than ‘teenagers’ and PsycINFO is a database full of academic research articles. Try the same search on Google and you get the opposite result, with ‘teenagers’ returning more hits. The reason? Google finds web pages, web pages are generally not very ‘academic’ and neither is the word ‘teenagers’. The lesson? Tailor your search terms to the source you are searching.

As for the difference counsellors vs. counselors, it’s a little more simple. The first spelling is British; the second American. Increasingly the difference doesn’t matter when searching. For example, PsycINFO automatically searches for either spelling so returns the same number of results whichever you choose. However, neither Google nor the library catalogue has this facility, so you will need to try both. Then again, if you only want British articles, then perhaps it’s good that they don’t search for the American spelling at the same time...

Finally, women vs. gender – this is an example of when you have little choice but to try them both separately. They have different meanings, but can be used interchangeably or, indeed, differently dependent on the context. You will also need to refer to a thesaurus for further alternatives: female, feminist, equal opportunities…

Finding research which has applied certain tests and measures or methodologies…

…is relatively easy to achieve on PsycINFO. Near the top of the screen in PsycINFO is a link to the database’s indexes. Click on this and then choose an index to browse. For example, you might want to choose ‘methodology’. Enter the name of the methodology you want to browse for (e.g. literature review, systematic review, longitudinal study…), select it from the results list, then add it to your search. In your search box you should now see something that looks like: (ZC "longitudinal study"). Combine this with your search e.g. (ZC "longitudinal study") and social cognition. All search results will then be for research which has applied that particular methodology.

To find research which has applied a particular test or measure, follow the same steps as above, but choose ‘Tests & Measures’ from the list of indexes. It is important to note that this will only find research which has applied the test or measure – it won’t find a copy of the test or measure itself.

Saving your searches on PsycINFO/ PsycARTICLES...

...means that you won't need to duplicate effort by repeating your searches the next time you log on. To be able to save searches for the future, you will need to set yourself up for a free 'My EBSCOHost' account:

1. Click on 'Sign in to My EBSCOHost' (at the top of the PsycINFO /PsycARTICLES screen).
2. Choose to 'Create a new account'.
3. Fill out the short form, and you're done!

As well as being able to save searches (via the 'search history' option, once signed in), you can also set up folders to save articles you have found and create personal preferences (such as how results are displayed). Other extra functionality you will gain includes being able to set up email or RSS alerts (for when new articles are published which match saved searches) and being able to share folders with other users. And the best thing of all, is that this extra functionality is all available to you for free by following the very simple account creation instructions above. As ever, do get in touch with me if you have any questions.