APA PsycInfo Webinars: Spring 2025

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

Techniques covered can also be used with APA PsycArticles® and APA PsycBooks®.

Details and registration links are below; all times shown are U.S. Eastern.

 

APA PsycInfo: Basic Search

This 45-minute session will help anyone who is new to searching the behavioral sciences literature using APA PsycInfo.

We’ll demonstrate simple yet powerful techniques that can increase your proficiency in short order, including how to quickly identify the best search terms; apply filters to narrow the range of results; and pinpoint empirical studies.

Highlights include the use of APA Thesaurus terms and other database fields to target your search, Boolean operators to accurately include or exclude concepts, and cited references to find related research. 

Techniques covered can also be used with APA PsycArticles® and APA PsycBooks®.

February 12, 2025, 2:00 p.m.

March 13, 2025, 2:00 p.m.

APA PsycInfo: Advanced Search

This 60-minute session highlights some of APA PsycInfo’s advanced functionality that’s designed to increase your efficiency by retrieving better search results faster.

After an overview of the three main vocabularies [keywords, Thesaurus subjects, and Classifications] you can use to search APA PsycInfo, we’ll share some easy ways to quickly expand or narrow your list of search results.

You’ll also learn about syntax for proximity search and truncation; using citations to explore related research; applying search limits and results filters; using the Author Affiliation field to discover where research of interest is happening; searching the Test and Measures field for information about tests used in the scholarly literature; and using the Grant/Sponsorship field to discover potential funding sources.

Wednesday, February 19, 02:00 pm

Thursday, March 20, 02:00 pm

 

Semester Special: Using APA PsycInfo to Expand on your ChatGPT Search

Join us for a live demo training on how to turn your rapid open web search into a more complete set of APA PsycInfo results.

This training will begin with a ChatGPT created list of references, a discussion of how this information could be incomplete or misleading, and specific strategies to build on these AI starting points by using APA’s PsycInfo database.

Strategies and tools include:

  • searching by topic terms & how to choose between keywords, thesaurus terms, and classification codes,
  • searching by author,
  • finding newer research based on a citation, and,
  • saving a search.

Tuesday, February 4, 1:00 pm

Thursday, February 20, 1:00 pm 

Monday, March 3, 11:00 am 

Wednesday, March 19, 11:00 am 

 

Can’t attend a scheduled session?

New Thesaurus Terms for Searching APA PsycInfo (Fall 2024)

 

In November, APA added 41 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including testing & assessment, parental health & stress, and artificial intelligence & digital technology. This Thesaurus update also includes 29 new cross-referenced terms, 227 revised scope notes, and additional edits to hierarchies.

additional examples of new thesaurus terms, also available in the link at the end of the page

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.

 

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How to Find Prepub Articles in the APA PsycNet Databases

 

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.

In this short video you’ll learn How to Find Prepub Articles in the APA PsycNet Databases. We’ll start with a brief description of prepub articles, including why they matter. Next, we’ll demonstrate how to access them and how to create alerts to stay current on upcoming prepubs in your research area.

By the end of this video you will be able to:

  • Recognize the value of prepub articles.
  • Identify several ways prepub articles are referred to by databases and publishers.
  • Access prepub articles in APA PsycNet.
  • Create an alert in APA PsycNet to access forthcoming prepub articles.

Related Resource:
APA PsycInfo Expert Tip: Online First Publications 

Explore Journal and Analyze & Filter

 

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.

Explore Journal and Analyze & Filter are two of the many tools within APA PsycInfo® research services, a suite of complimentary, premium features available as part of your institution’s APA PsycInfo  subscription. These features leverage artificial intelligence to personalize your users’ path for searching, exploring, and analyzing the latest psychology research.

The Explore Journal feature equips researchers with tools to dive deep into a journal of interest and evaluate everything from its top-cited articles and topical coverage, to pinpointing the chronology of an author’s articles.

The Analyze & Filter feature allows researchers to confirm a journal’s or author’s most prevalent methodologies, track changes to those statistics over time by adjusting the publication dates filter, or combine filters for their unique parameters.

Related Resource:

APA PsycInfo Research Services: Your AI-Powered Research Assistant

Using APA PsycTests with APA PsycArticles

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.

APA PsycTests is a collection of descriptive records of psychological tests and measures for the social and behavioral sciences that also integrates seamlessly with APA PsycArticles.

By tagging 30 metadata fields, including reliability, validity, constructs, and usage permissions of over 75,000 measures, APA PsycTests:

  • Eases the burden on researchers to create new tests from scratch.
  • Provides instructors with essential psychometrics examples.
  • Gives students more insight into tests found during their APA PsycArticles research.

Watch this short demonstration of Using APA PsycTests with APA PsycArticles to streamline your research workflow. Our video includes three example searches for how students, instructors, and advanced researchers may use APA PsycTests. 

Related Resources: 

APA PsycTests – Top Features to Know 

Getting Started with APA PsycTests: Search Smarter, Not Harder 

Using APA PsycTests with APA PsycInfo