Before You Begin | Starting Your Search | Modifying Results | Displaying and Printing Results | Creating an Email Alert

The PsycINFO database, produced by the American Psychological Association, contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations in the field of psychology. Journal coverage spans1887 to the present and includes international material selected from more than 1,300 periodicals written in over 25 languages. Current chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987 to the present. Over 55,000 references are added annually through weekly updates.

The Vanderbilt University Web version of the PsycINFO database is restricted to Vanderbilt students, faculty, and staff. This guide is designed to help searchers use the WebSPIRS 5.1 interface.
 

Things to Know Before You Begin

• Boolean searching is used to connect concepts. There are several operators that allow you to form sophisticated search requests:

  AND searches for records that contain both (or all) terms.
  OR searches for records that contain either (or any one) of the search terms.
  NOT searches for records that contain one term but not another.
  IN searches for records that contain a term in a specified field.
  NEAR searches for records that contain terms in the same sentence.
  WITH searches for records that contain terms in the same field.

  SAMPLE SEARCHES

  Single Concept, Searched as a Phrase: physical attractiveness
  

  Two Concepts Combined: physical attractiveness AND self-esteem

  A topic broadened with a synonym: physical attractiveness OR beauty

• Truncation is used to search for all forms of a word. Use * to retrieve different possible word endings. Use ? to try various letters in the middle of words.

  SAMPLE SEARCHES

  child* retrieves child, child's, children, children's, etc.

  wom?n will retrieve woman, women.

• Parentheses should be used to group terms joined by OR in a complex search statement.

  SAMPLE SEARCH

  (physical attractiveness OR beauty) AND self-esteem
   

Starting Your Search

• Develop a search statement by deciding what the key concepts of your topic are and if you have any specific limitations that you wish to impose (such as a certain type of publication, population, geographic region, or language).
   
• Open PsycINFO from the Articles & Databases page

 




• The Help and How Do I...? links lead to information about searching PsycINFO, such as the fields used in the database, how to narrow a search, and how to use advanced search features. If you are just learning how to use PsycINFO, you may want to keep coming back to these resources.

• Help Finding Search Terms

  When you aren't sure where to start, you can try the Suggest button (underneath the search box). It will attempt to match your word or phrase with valid "descriptors" (otherwise known as subject headings).

  The Index tab lets you select search terms from the list of words and phrases that are indexed in PsycINFO. This can be useful in determining whether a word is frequently used in the database, or whether other synonyms should be explored.

  A particularly useful tab is the one pointing to the Thesaurus, which is a searchable list of subject headings or descriptors used in PsycINFO, along with links to broader, narrower, and related terms.
   

• Entering Your Search

  Type the search you developed in the entry box. If you do not want the default Find Terms "Anywhere" search, use the pulldown to search "in Subjects", "in Authors", or "in Titles". Note: a Subject search only looks for terms in the Descriptors and Key Phrases.

  Alternatively, select the Advanced tab to find terms in specific fields of the record. Type a word or phrase in the Search Box and highlight the field you want to search. If you want to link two concepts together click on the AND, OR, or NOT buttons between the two Search Boxes. You can also type multiple words in a Search Box.
   

Ways to Modify Your Search

• Combining searches

  Building a search in steps and using the Search History allows you to see which terms are productive or problematic. Search each concept individually, click on the 'Search History' tab, then check the boxes next to the searches you wish to combine.

  

  Beginning a search request with an operator automatically combines that request with the previous one. For instance, if your first search was "anger", searching for "and driving-behavior" would give you the same results as if you had typed in the search "anger and driving-behavior" or "#1 and driving-behavior."
   

• "Find Similar"

  Within the search results, PsycINFO provides a "Find Similar" option. Clicking the button searches for additional references with the same words in the titles and descriptors. The results may vary in relevance: unfortunately, there is no way for you to specify the words that you find most significant - except by performing your own searches.

  
   

• Change the Search Limits

  To retrieve only particular Document Types (books, journal articles), Publication Types (empirical studies, literature reviews), Populations (human or animal), Age Groups, etc., click the More button. This will give you an expandable menu of limiting options.

  
   

Displaying Results

• The first 10 matching results will be automatically displayed. You can select or Mark relevant records for printing, downloading, or e-mailing by clicking the small box to the upper left of each individual record entry.

  

  The Document Type field at the top will display Journal-Article or Peer-Reviewed-Journal for journal records.

  The button links you through to the fulltext of the article, lets you search Acorn for copies in print or other online services, and, if necessary, provides an easy link to interlibrary loans.
   

Creating an Email Alert (SDI)

• The SDI feature allows you to save searches that will automatically run against the PsycINFO database, with new references sent to your email. You can access this feature by performing a search, then clicking on the Search History tab. More details on this procedure are available in the Saving and Re-running Searches Automatically guide.
   

When You Have Finished

• Click the Logout button in the top right corner when you have finished searching.