Category: For Faculty

New Handbook: The APA Handbook of Psychopathology

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians

The APA Handbooks in Psychology series was launched in 2011 to provide comprehensive overviews and in-depth study of specific subfields within psychology. All of the Handbooks are included in the PsycBOOKS® database, and titles are also available individually.

The series currently contains 27 authoritative titles, including the 2014 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology.

The most recent addition to this series is the APA Handbook of Psychopathology, edited by James N. Butcher and published in February 2018.

This Handbook provides an overview of symptoms and classification of disorders, and discusses the history of psychopathology, behavioral genetics, cognitive research methodology, brain imaging, behavioral observation, personality assessment, and developments in social policy, government policy, and legal decisions. The handbook also addresses the considerable challenges produced by rapid progress in the field, including the evolution of diagnostic systems that define disorders.

The handbook is composed of two volumes:
Volume 1: Psychopathology: Understanding, Assessing and Treating Adult Mental Disorders
Volume 2: Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents.

Material on each disorder is presented with a focus upon significant facets: the clinical picture, wherein contributors describe the symptoms of the disorder and its associated features; factors involved in the development of the disorder; relationships or comorbidity with other disorders; different assessment and treatment approaches.

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Access to PsycCRITIQUES®

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians

PsycCRITIQUES® was discontinued as of December 31, 2017.

The full PsycCRITIQUES archived database is now available to the public through the Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron.
In addition, institutions that have an active subscription to Portico — a digital preservation and electronic archiving service —have access to an archived version of the database via their institutional agreement with Portico.

APA thanks all the psychologists who supported PsycCRITIQUES through their service as editors, associate editors, and review authors over the years.

 

If you have any questions about access to PsycCRITIQUES, please contact us at psycinfo@apa.org.

APA Style CENTRAL – Research Lab Book: Develop My Research Idea

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

Today we’d like to highlight one of our APA Style CENTRAL® handouts, “Research Lab Book: Develop My Research Idea” (PDF, 599K). Please feel free to link to this handout where students, faculty, and researchers will find it!

""APA Style CENTRAL’s Research Lab Book is a suite of tools to help you plan and document your research process. Develop My Research Idea guides you through developing a research idea that is neither too broad nor too narrow. Appropriate for use with original research or a literature review, this 5-step approach walks you through a structured framework for brainstorming your interests, identifying a specific topic, developing a research question, elaborating on the details of that question, and clarifying your expectations about the outcome of your research.

When you’re done, you’ll be ready to search for relevant literature and begin considering your study design.

Undergraduates and others who can benefit from a more structured way of formulating a research topic will find this tool helpful.

Faculty and writing instructors can also use these steps individually or in combination as Continue reading →

In Case You Missed It – Searching By Keyword, Index Term, and More

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

In January of 2017, we posted about searching APA PsycInfo® by different vocabularies – keywords, index terms, classification codes, and MeSH.

In case you missed it, start the new semester off with a better understanding of which vocabulary will suit your needs.

Keywords (also called Key Concepts or Identifiers) – individual words, key concepts, or brief phrases that describe the document’s content; usually provided by the author or publisher.

Good for researchers who are new to a topic.

Index Terms (also called Subjects or Subject Headings) – are chosen by APA staff from Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®.

Good for the focused researcher. 

Classification Codes (also called APA PsycInfo Classifications) – a descriptive term plus a corresponding numerical code; like the index terms, there is a pre-existing list, or controlled vocabulary.

Good to pair with keywords or index terms.

MeSH – Medical Subject Headings are a controlled vocabulary maintained by the National Library of Medicine for their PubMed database.

Good for medical or neuroscience topics.

To learn more about any of these search vocabularies, review our post on them from January 2017.

Related Resources:

APA PsycInfo Expert Tip – Searching by Keywords Across Platforms

APA PsycInfo Expert Tip – Classification Codes

Tutorial – Using APA PsycInfo Classification Codes on EBSCOhost

Tutorial Tuesday: How (and Why) to use the APA Thesaurus on APA PsycNET

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

It’s Tutorial Tuesday! In this series, we explore APA’s library of video tutorials available on the PsycINFO® YouTube channel and the APA Style CENTRAL® 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.

We recently updated one of our tutorials: How (and Why) to Use the APA Thesaurus on APA PsycNET®.""

How can you be sure you are finding the best results for your search?

By using the best search terms! The APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms (“APA Thesaurus”) contains the controlled vocabulary that APA uses to describe and categorize all content indexed in PsycINFO. This resource is regularly updated to include new and changing terminology for topics in the behavioral sciences, and you can put it to work for you!

Using the APA Thesaurus helps you eliminate “noise” from your search and retrieve the most relevant results by revealing the best search terms for your topic. The APA Thesaurus is a valuable tool for students new to research or any researcher who is new to a topic area and may not yet know the best terminology for searching.

This brief video (2:40 minutes) demonstrates the benefits of using the APA Thesaurus when searching databases on the APA PsycNET platform, and includes:

  • Examples of recent terminology updates to the APA Thesaurus;
  • How to access the APA Thesaurus when crafting a search;
  • Using the APA Thesaurus to find related terms for narrowing or expanding your search;
  • Discovering index terms for broader concepts that encompass your research topic and make searching more efficient; and
  • Uncovering additional search terms you may not have considered.

This tutorial is a great resource to link from a LibGuide or course module for any class working with APA Databases on APA PsycNET, and can be helpful in answering email or chat reference questions.

The previous version of this tutorial will remain available, but if you have embedded or linked to it anywhere, we encourage you to update your materials with the link to this new version.

Related Resources: