APA PsycInfo research services – Feature Spotlight #2

top features polaris apa psycinfo research services

Join us for a live training session on maximizing your institutional access to APA PsycInfo with personalized tools designed to enhance discovery of the latest psychology research.

Register for October 8, 2024, 1:00 p.m. EST 

APA database experts will demonstrate how to use various features included in APA PsycInfo research services, including:

  • Author Mapper – Gives a quick visual snapshot of an author’s publishing activity. Author Mapper displays the co-authors of a selected researcher, as well as how many publications each pair has co-authored, how many total publications each researcher has indexed in APA PsycInfo, and the number of citations they’ve received. 
  • Topic Mapper –  Built specifically for discovery and exploration, Topic Mapper visualizes the connections between your research topics of interest, identifies top-cited articles for each, lists term definitions and historical notes, and more.
  • Discover Dissertations – View, analyze and filter a collection of Dissertations based on research topic, author, publication year, most viewed, and relevance to your research interests. Find top dissertations from your email notifications (if you subscribe), trending publications on your topics of interest, as well as AI-generated suggestions for new literature that you may be interested in.

Can’t attend this one? 

  • Register to receive a recording link shortly after the live event
  • Bookmark our Webinar Training Schedule page with training descriptions and registration links for future sessions
  • Subscribe to this blog to hear about future trainings and other updates from APA Publishing 

Related Resources

YouTube Playlist: PsycInfo Research Services (webinars and tutorials): 

APA Website: Learn More about PsycInfo Research Services (free with your institutional access to APA PsycInfo)

Blog Post: APA PsycInfo Research Services: Your AI-Powered Research Assistant 

Using the APA Thesaurus to Find Relevant Articles on a Topic

 

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 thesaurus terms, also called index terms, are controlled vocabulary used in database records to make searching easier and more successful. By standardizing the words or phrases used to represent concepts, you don’t need to try and figure out all the ways different authors could refer to the same concept.

The first video, Building a Search with the APA Thesaurus and Index Terms, is an introduction for all platforms that shows what the thesaurus is, why it is a valuable search tool, and what to do if you can’t find a thesaurus term to fit your research concept. 

The second video demonstrates how to use thesaurus terms in an APA PsycInfo search to find relevant articles on a topic, and how to revise a search to include additional thesaurus terms. 

Select the video for the platform or website that hosts APA PsycInfo at your institution. 

Learn more about the APA Thesaurus on our website

APA PsycInfo & APA PsycTests: Fall 2024 Webinars

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 or APA PsycTests more effectively!

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

APA PsycInfo: Beginner 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®.

Wednesday, September 11, 11:00 am

Thursday, October 10, 2:00 pm 

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.

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

Wednesday, September 18, 11:00 am

Thursday, October 17, 2:00 pm

 

Semester Special: APA PsycTests

APA PsycTests is a collection of psychological tests and measures for the social and behavioral sciences.

This live demonstration includes:

  • Basic Setup and Layout of the APA PsycTests record
  • Advanced Search for APA PsycTests
  • Learning more from APA PsycTests about a measure found in APA PsycInfo
  • Browsing APA PsycTests

While test content is equivalent on all versions of APA PsycTests, the design of search pages differs between platforms. Please register for the training that matches the platform where you use APA PsycTests. 

APA PsycTests on APA PsycNet & Ovid

Thursday, September 10, 2:00 pm

Monday, October 7, 11:00 am 

APA PsycTests on EBSCOhost & ProQuest 

Wednesday, September 25, 11:00 am

Thursday, October 24, 2:00 pm 

 

Can’t attend a scheduled session?

New Thesaurus Terms for Searching APA PsycInfo (Summer 2024)

 

In June, APA added 96 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including employment, education, and diversity. This Thesaurus update also includes 61 new cross-referenced terms, and 122 revised scope notes.

New terms from this Summer update will initially be applied to current content only; following the Fall 2024 release, the majority of 2024’s new postable terms will be back-mapped to older records.

NEW POSTABLE TERMS

Use this link to access the list of postable terms on our website.

 

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 or view the PDF for more details. 

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

New Videos Added to APA PsycTherapy (Spring 2024)

 

On March 18, we added 12 new videos to APA PsycTherapy®, our streaming video database designed to meet the teaching and training needs of psychotherapy students and practitioners. APA PsycTherapy videos are recorded during an unscripted session to provide an authentic example of psychotherapy conducted by an expert therapist.

Here are a few highlight videos: 

  • Focused Brief Group Therapy in Practice: Group therapy offers an efficient and effective alternative to individual therapy, and this particular approach to group therapy uses a series of techniques to activate the mechanisms of change in a far shorter time than most group therapies. In the video, Dr. Whittingham first demonstrates an individual client pre-group session and then holds a group therapy session, allowing viewers to see how working in a group setting can be beneficial to each individual. The demonstration in this video is framed by an informative discussion with the guest therapist hosted by Dr. Cheri Marmarosh.

  • Multicultural Orientation in Psychotherapy: In this video, Dr. Cynthia de las Fuentes demonstrates and discusses the key skills involved in this approach. By using an integrative approach to healing, practitioners accompany their clients (individuals, families, communities, etc.) by bearing witness to the pain of marginalization, helping them recognize the effects of domination and subjugation (e.g., discrimination, colonialism), and embrace the radical notion that health, wellness, and healing is a form of resistance for the betterment of self, family, community, and society. The demonstration in this video is framed by an informative discussion with the therapist hosted by Dr. Lillian Comas-Diaz. The demonstration in this video features an actor portraying a client on the basis of a composite of cases.

  • Working With Refugees: This video demonstrates and discusses key skills useful for professionals when working with refugees. The refugee count increases annually, however there is minimal training in mental health fields that provides the awareness, knowledge, and skills to effectively work with this population. In this video, Dr. Fred Bemak demonstrates and discusses key skills such as culturally responsive psychotherapy, strength-based interventions, emphasis on developing cultural empowerment useful for professionals when working with refugees. The demonstration in this video is framed by an informative discussion with the therapist hosted by Dr. Rita Chi-Ying Chung. This video features an actor portraying a client on the basis of a composite of cases.

  • Pregnancy Loss: Dr. Rayna Markin demonstrates an approach that combines attachment theory, trauma theory, self-psychology, and research on the therapy relationship to help a client process the grief from her own pregnancy loss. Dr. Markin uses empathic attunement to help the client to process the trauma and loss associated with these adverse reproductive events and to repair the damage to self-esteem caused by pregnancy loss. The demonstration in this video is framed by an informative discussion with the therapist, hosted by Cheri Marmarosh.

    With 15-25 new videos added every year, APA PsycTherapy will continue to grow and showcase the latest examples and emerging best practices from clinical psychology.

    Related Resources
    Interested in learning more about this accessibility-certified database of recorded psychotherapy sessions? Visit the APA PsycTherapy information page or view brief tutorials on our YouTube playlist for APA PsycTherapy

    An APA PsycTherapy subscription includes a PDF copy of The APA PsycTherapy Teaching Guide, Revised Edition which features a series of exercises for using APA PsycTherapy with students, in clinical supervision settings, psychotherapy researcher training, and more.

Watch a preview of the newest content update:

American Psychological Association. Multicultural Orientation in Psychotherapy [Video]. APA PsycTherapy.

Not yet a subscriber to APA PsycTherapy?