Subject Searching in PsycINFO

 

1. State your hypothesis as precisely as possible.  For example:

 

Perception or management of time varies due to gender differences.

 

2. Identify two or three key concepts in your thesis.  For example: gender differences and time management.  Plan to search each key concept separately.

 

3. Type your first concept in the top “Find” box in PsycINFO.  Make sure there is a checkmark in the “Suggest Subject Terms” box above the “Find” box.

 

 

4. You are now in the official APA subject thesaurus, the resource for PsycINFO search terms.  Currently the thesaurus shows you the list of terms that best match “gender differences,” and you can see that the correct term is actually “Human Sex Differences.” Click in the box next to the term and then click on the “Search” button.  This will retrieve all the articles that APA decided were about gender differences, even ones that did not use your exact words.

 

 

5. Now you are seeing a display of records in the database that have “Human Sex Differences” as an assigned subject term.  There are thousands.  Forget this concept for now and move on to the next concept: Time Management.  Return to Step 1 and repeat it for this new term.

 

6. In some cases you may want to select several terms from the Thesaurus display.  Make sure all the terms are closely related to the concept you are searching; do not add other concepts at this time.  Make sure that “or” is the search option selected in the drop-down menu next to the “Add” button (in other words, the computer will search for either Time Management or  Time Estimation or Time Perception or Time Pressure), then click on “Search.”

 

 

7. Once you have searched each of your concepts separately, you need to join your terms together.  Go to the “Search History/Alerts” tab below the “Find” box.  The Search History displays all of your previous searches.  Combine the concepts you want to search together by selecting two or more searches, in our case S1 and S2.  This time make sure that “and” is displayed next to the “Add” button, and click on Add.  When you click on “Search” you will retrieve records that include both of the concepts (this narrows your search, as opposed to the “or” search we did above).

 

 

8. The records retrieved using this method have both of the searched concepts in every record.  When this handout was created, the illustrated search retrieved 176 records.  Doing a basic keyword search for “gender differences and time management” without using subject terms retrieved only 12 records, several of which were not relevant.

 

 

WIU Libraries

1/26/07

Krista Bowers Sharpe (after Kate Joswick)