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.

Using the controlled vocabulary of the Thesaurus means a database search will quickly and accurately retrieve all publications related to a specific concept, regardless of the keywords the authors may have 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:

Using the APA Thesaurus to Find Relevant Articles on a Topic (YouTube tutorial)