Tag: APA PsycInfo

New Thesaurus Terms for Searching APA PsycInfo (Winter 2022)

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students
APA PsycInfo: The premier abstracting and indexing resource for behavioral and social science research

In January, APA added 44 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including sport and exercise psychology, psychological testing, mental health, and COVID-19. This update, which includes 27 new cross-referenced terms and 22 revised scope notes, brings the total number of index terms in the Thesaurus to more than 10,000.

In order to provide current and accurate search terminology for emerging research, the winter update will be followed by two additional Thesaurus updates in 2022 — one in the spring (May) and another in the fall. New terms from the winter and spring updates will be applied to current content only, but the majority of postable terms new for 2022 will be back-mapped to older records following the fall release.

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Webinar Alert: APA PsycInfo Fall Webinars for Students & Faculty

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Librarians, For Students

Interested in strengthening your APA database searching skills? Join us for the next round of APA PsycInfo webinars designed for students, faculty, and anyone else who wants to learn more about how to search APA PsycInfo more effectively!

The 30-minute APA PsycInfo – Basic Search session includes live search demos and provides search tips and strategies to help you locate more relevant results in less time.

The 30-minute APA PsycInfo – Advanced Search session explores a few of the added-value fields in APA PsycInfo and using them to uncover much more than journal articles. Search demos will demonstrate how to identify what research is happening at which institutions; finding new journals in which to publish your work; information about tests used in related research; and potential funding opportunities for your project.

Search tips and strategies covered in both sessions are relevant to all search platforms — APA PsycNet®, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest.

The sessions may be attended separately, but we encourage you to take both if you are interested!

You can register with GoTo Webinar for one of the following times:

These webinars are an ideal way for new users to become acquainted with PsycInfo or experienced users to get a refresher on APA PsycInfo if they have had a previous training session. Please help us spread the word to interested students and faculty!

Can’t attend a scheduled session?

Webinar Alert: APA PsycInfo Fall Sessions for Librarians

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Librarians

Our Beyond Subject Searching webinar is designed for librarians and other expert users of APA PsycInfo. If you’re looking to expand your search skills, or just need an APA Databases refresher, we hope you’ll join us!

This 45-minute session includes a behind the scenes look at the APA PsycInfo record structure and a live search demo that shows how use APA Databases for more than just locating articles.

Search examples include:

  • seeing the types of research being done at a particular institution
  • identifying journals in which to publish new work
  • finding grants and sponsorships
  • locating tests and measures

You can register with GoTo Webinar for one of the following times:

  • Friday, September 17, 2:30 pm (Eastern Time)
  • Friday, November 19, 2:00 pm (Eastern Time)

Can’t join us at the times listed? View a recording on our YouTube channel whenever it’s convenient for you.

Additional Training Resources

Feel free to share or embed a link to any of our training materials.

New Thesaurus Terms for Searching APA PsycInfo

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians

In July 2021, APA added 50 new terms to the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics including vaccination attitudes, racial trauma, and gender expression.  

Most of these new terms were mapped back and added to records published in APA’s databases in the last 5 years. This Thesaurus update also included 32 new cross-referenced terms, and new and revised scope notes. 

The 9,900+ index terms found in the Thesaurus provide precise and consistent terminology for searching all APA research databases. Using the controlled vocabulary of the Thesaurus means a database search will quickly retrieve all items about a specific concept no matter what keywords the authors used. 

The Thesaurus tool is found on all platforms as part of APA PsycInfo® and redirects synonyms to the preferred “Use” term to include in your search. Each Thesaurus record includes links to broader terms, narrower terms, and related terms, the year the term was introduced, an historical note if applicable, and a scope note providing definition and application. 

You can see the full list of Thesaurus changes on our website.  

Related Resource: 
YouTube Tutorial – Using the APA Thesaurus to Find Relevant Articles on a Topic 

Finding Journal Articles in APA PsycInfo

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians

It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s library of video tutorials available on the APA Publishing Training YouTube channel. Please feel free to link to or embed our videos in your library websites or LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

A new version of the tutorial Finding Journal Articles in APA PsycInfo to Answer Your Research Question is available.

This short video shows the steps to take in APA PsycInfo to find a selection of journal articles that will answer your research question.

By the end of this video, you should be able to:

  • Identify key concepts from your research question
  • Conduct a search in APA PsycInfo using keywords, truncation, and quotes
  • Apply filters to refine your results
  • Locate valuable information from the articles in your results
  • Save results and create an email alert to stay current on your topic

See other recent tutorials from APA Publishing:
Using the APA Thesaurus to Find Relevant Articles on a Topic
Peer-Reviewed Empirical Articles