PsycINFO Expert Tip: Updating Search Alerts When a Thesaurus Term Changes

The Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®, which is used to tag and categorize records in PsycINFO®, was updated in December 2015. In addition to adding terms, we changed five terms that had already been a part of the Thesaurus – they are no longer Index Terms, but have been turned into Use references.

Here are the terms that were changed, along with the new Index Terms that have taken their places:

Terms that are now Use references New Index Terms to search
Aspergers Syndrome
Autism
Pervasive Developmental Disorders
 Autism Spectrum Disorders
Complications (Disorders) Sequelae
Q Sort Testing Technique Q-Sort

Continue reading

From the Deck of . . . the ALA Midwinter 2016 Lunch & Learn

Welcome to “From the Deck of . . .” an irregular series in which we highlight search demos and other information from the slide decks we create for our live training sessions. You can view and download these materials from our SlideShare account.

One of the items we discussed during our presentation at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting was how to find book reviews in PsycINFO. We performed this search demonstration live using ProQuest, and have recreated it below with screenshots. You can take similar steps to complete this search on APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, or Ovid. If you need assistance, talk to a librarian, or contact us at psycinfo@apa.org.

Before we get started, remember that PsycINFO is not a full text database, so the full text of the reviews you find may not be displayed. If you’re searching PsycINFO through your college or university’s subscription, ask a librarian for help finding the full text. If you’re searching through an individual subscription to APA PsycNET, this brief tutorial may be of assistance. Continue reading

PsycINFO Expert Tip: Grants & Sponsorships

Do you use the Grant/Sponsorship field in PsycINFO? This field displays the funding sources that the authors include in their acknowledgements. The Grant/Sponsorship field will capture data about grant funding, but you’ll also see information on fellowships, scholarships, departmental awards, and more – any type of funding source that the authors acknowledge. Take a look at the variety of funding acknowledged here:

Screenshot of the Grant/Sponsorship field from a PsycINFO record on APA PsycNET.

The Grant/Sponsorship field from a PsycINFO record, shown here on APA PsycNET.

The Grant/Sponsorship field is divided into four sub-fields: Sponsor, Recipient, Grant Number, and Other Details. You’ll always see the Sponsor and Recipient sub-fields, even if the authors didn’t indicate who the sponsor was (though they almost always provide this information) or who was the named recipient of the funding. If the authors provide the grant number, we include that in a separate sub-field. Any other information about the funding source is added to the Other Details sub-field. This can run the gamut from the name of a scholarship to the name of a large-scale research initiative.

All four of these sub-fields may be searched by choosing the Grant/Sponsorship option. For example, try searching PsycINFO for your institution, or for a grant number (try KZCC-EW-103-2).

A screenshot of searching PsycINFO on APA PsycNET for the grant number KZCC-EW-103-2.

Searching PsycINFO, via APA PsycNET, for the grant number.

Why provide this information? It’s one more detail that we believe can be helpful in working with PsycINFO. Instructors can use the information to open a conversation about bias in research with their class; it can also be used as a source of ideas for researchers who are seeking funding, looking for collaborators, or want to find out if the funder was a government agency or commercial entity.

You won’t see the Grant/Sponsorship field on every record in PsycINFO, as we didn’t begin collecting this information until 2005. And of course, not everything indexed in the database includes funding acknowledgements.

Related Resources:

New on APA PsycNET: Translate the Interface

In late July, we rolled out the first language translation of the APA PsycNET interface – Brazilian Portuguese. Since then, we’ve been hard at work translating APA PsycNET into German, European Spanish, and French. These three options were added in mid-November, so you may have missed them!

Screenshot of language translation options on APA PsycNET

You can now change the interface language on APA PsycNET to one of four options.

Continue reading

New Terms Added to the PsycINFO Thesaurus

By Ian Galloway, Senior Vocabulary Development Specialist

We recently released an update to The Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, the source of the controlled vocabulary used in indexing PsycINFO and the other APA databases. All of the items included in APA databases – journal articles, books and book chapters, dissertations, and more – are represented by a record that is indexed, or tagged, with Index Terms from the Thesaurus. This allows someone searching a database to quickly find all of the items about a particular concept, such as Affirmative Therapy, Playfulness, or Transactional Leadership, no matter what terminology the authors used.

Keywords, Index Terms, and PsycINFO Classification Codes from a record in the PsycARTICLES database.

Keywords, Index Terms, and PsycINFO Classification Codes from a record in the PsycARTICLES database.

Continue reading