Category: For Students

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.

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APA Style CENTRAL Expert Tip – Citing APA Style CENTRAL in Your Paper

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians, For Students

While working on a research paper in APA Style CENTRAL®, you may want to add as a reference a video within the Learning Center.

The best way to add APA Style CENTRAL content to My References is to select the Create tab within Add References.

From there, you can choose the reference type that best fits, such as Streaming and other online video (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.), in the Audiovisual Media tab.

Continue reading →

Tutorial Thursday – Searching PsycINFO’s Tests & Measures Field

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

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

For today’s edition of Tutorial Thursday, we’d like to highlight a video series on our PsycINFO YouTube channel: Searching the Tests & Measures field in PsycINFO

 

This brief (3 – 4 minute) video shows how to:

  • Search and view the Tests & Measures field in PsycINFO records, to see a list of the tests and measures used in a particular study;
  • Follow the DOI to view the PsycTEST record for a test or measure, when available;
  • Use the “[Appended]” notation to locate the test questions in the appendix, methodology, or table of the article’s full-text.

 

https://youtu.be/7U6D8vKTTdI

A version of this tutorial is available for each PsycINFO platform.

 

Related Resource: PsycINFO Expert Tip: Finding the Tests in PsycINFO

 

Please feel free to link to this tutorial in any location where students, faculty, and researchers will find it!

Do you have a “how-to” question about PsycINFO or PsycTESTS?  Please let us know!

APA Style CENTRAL – Customizing the Writing Center Display

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, “Customizing the APA Style CENTRAL® Writing Center Display” (PDF, 565K). Please feel free to link to this handout where students, faculty, and researchers will find it!

APA Style CENTRAL’s Writing Center was designed to be flexible, offering a wealth of tools to help you manage the process of writing your paper or manuscript. Understanding that users often have different needs at different times, this resource shares how the display can be configured to accommodate your workflow preferences while you are writing your paper.

Details in the handout include:

  • Three (3) options for temporarily hiding the left navigation menu to maximize the amount of horizontal viewing space while you are working on your paper;
  • How to collapse the References pane and/or expand the Writing/Editing pane to increase the vertical display of paper text;
  • Activating full-screen mode; and
  • The “Find and Cite Reference” tool for creating an in-text citation when your References pane is hidden — or even when you just want to quickly cite your work without having to scroll down past the Writing/Editing pane to access the “References” tab.

These options can be activated while you are working on a paper. Default settings are restored whenever you exit the paper, log out, or otherwise begin a new browser session.

Want to learn more? You’ll find this handout on our APA Style CENTRAL® Handouts and Guides page, where we continue to add handouts and documentation for users and administrators as they become available.

Do you have a “how-to” question about APA Style CENTRAL or some aspect of it you’d like to know more about? Please let us know!

Tutorial Thursday: Starting a Paper in APA Style CENTRAL

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

For today’s edition of Tutorial Thursday, we’d like to highlight a video on our APA Style CENTRAL® YouTube channel: APA Style CENTRAL: Starting a Paper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgOY3WiPw6Q

This brief video (3:35 min) demonstrates how to begin writing your paper in APA Style CENTRAL. Highlights include:

  • Selecting a writing template;
  • The difference between the “Student assignment” and “Professional manuscript” options when beginning your paper;
  • Using the Headings tool to quickly format headings in APA Style®;
  • Using the linked outline to add a new section to your paper, rearrange sections, and quickly navigate between sections;
  • Getting help with APA Style guidelines while writing; and
  • Exporting your paper as a Microsoft Word or PDF file.

Please feel free to link to this tutorial in any location where students, faculty, and researchers will find it!

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