Category: For Students

APA PsycTests – Reliability, Validity & Factor Analysis

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

If you’re planning to cite or reuse a test you find in APA PsycTests®, you’ll want to check the reliability, validity, and factor analysis to make sure it suits your research.

Reliability is the ability of a test to measure an attribute consistently. If a group of people takes a personality test and many of them get different results from one day to the next, the test has low reliability.

Validity is the degree to which a test reflects what it is supposed to measure. If a test that is supposed to measure general intelligence actually measures the ability to recall classic literature, the test has low validity.

Factor Analysis is a mathematical procedure that reduces a set of interrelations among variables to a smaller set of variables. For example, a sociology survey might start with six factors of wealth (income, education, occupation, home value, parks in neighborhood, and crime in neighborhood) and, using statistical correlations, reduce them to just two factors: individual socioeconomic status and neighborhood socioeconomic status.

These three psychometric fields can be found in the Test Development Record. The Test Development Record provides details from the original article that discusses the development of the test. This information should help you determine if this test will fit your needs. (Note that if the authors do not report this information in the original article, then it will not be provided in the APA PsycTests record.)

Some tests will also have Test Use and Test Review records. Each APA PsycTests record pulls information from a different research article, so the reliability, validity, and factor analysis can be different from record to record, even if they describe the same test. View a sample APA PsycTests record to see where these fields are located within the record and the data they might contain.

If you need to find the full text of the original article, look in the Reported In or Source field. If you’re having trouble finding full-text for the original article, ask your librarian.

When choosing a test for reuse, don’t forget to check permissions!

Spotlight: PsycINFO® Quick Reference Guides

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

Need a brief overview on how to search PsycINFO®?  We have a Quick Reference Guide for that!

Screenshot of PsycINFO Quick Reference Guide for APA PsycNET showing description of PsycINFO

PsycINFO Quick Reference Guide for APA PsycNET®

 

Learn the basics of searching PsycINFO on your platform to make your search more effective. Each PsycINFO Quick Reference Guide covers:

  • System navigation
  • Command searching
  • Correct search syntax for specific fields
  • Advanced search syntax (e.g., Boolean operators, truncation)
  • Limiting your search
  • Managing your search results
  • Platform-specific tips
PsycINFO Search Basics on APA PsycNET: Screenshot of Quick Reference Guide showing descriptions of Boolean Operators (AND, OR, and NOT), Phrases, and Truncation

PsycINFO Search Basics on APA PsycNET

 

Download or link to the PsycINFO Quick Reference Guide for your platform:

This is a perfect course handout for students who are new to searching PsycINFO, or anyone else who may want a refresher. Librarians and faculty can request pocket-size print versions to distribute: Email psycinfo@apa.org with your name, institution, mailing address, quantity needed, and specified platform.

Related Resources:

APA provides search help and training for all end-users, from novices through expert searchers. Find search guides, webinar schedules, tutorials, and more at our APA Search Help and Training Center for databases and electronic resources.

Be sure to check out our PsycINFO YouTube channel for short training tutorials and webinar recordings demonstrating how to put APA databases to work for you. View the playlist for your platform: APA Databases on APA PsycNET, APA Databases on EBSCOhost, APA Databases on Ovid, or APA Databases on ProQuest.

Webinar Alert: APA Style CENTRAL® Trainings for April 2017

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

 

APA Style CENTRAL® is the newest member of the APA Style® family, launched in July 2016.

APA’s training specialists have developed several webinars for librarians, instructors, and students that include content overview and a live demonstration of features.

Click on any session link to register (all times are EDT).

The Online Introduction introduces librarians to the platform:

Teaching with APA Style CENTRAL details how faculty, librarians, and other instructors can use APA Style CENTRAL in teaching APA Style:

Writing Papers in APA Style CENTRAL teaches end users how to create and save papers using APA Style CENTRAL:

For more information, and to see the full schedule, visit the APA Style CENTRAL webinars page.

Webinar Alert: PsycINFO Sessions for Students & Faculty – April 5-7, 2017

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

Our next series of PsycINFO® webinars for students and faculty will run on April 5, April 6, and April 7 from 11 – 11:30 a.m. EDT (UTC−04:00). The sessions may be attended separately, but we encourage those who are interested to take all three, so we offer them on consecutive days:

We will provide information relevant to all search platforms including APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest. The platform demonstrated will be based on the needs of the attendees of each session. For more information on this series, including full descriptions, please visit our database webinar training web page.

These webinars are an ideal way for students to get a refresher on PsycINFO if they have had a previous training session. Please help us spread the word to interested students and faculty!

Tutorial Thursday: APA Style CENTRAL Online Introduction

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

It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s extensive library of video tutorials. In addition to our APA Databases and Training Videos available on YouTube, we now have an emerging library of training videos on our new APA Style CENTRAL® YouTube Channel. Recordings of webinars, like the one linked below, and other training videos are added as they become available.

For today’s edition of Tutorial Thursday, we’d like to share a recording of one of our APA Style CENTRAL webinars: APA Style CENTRAL Online Introduction.

Screenshot from the recording of the Writing With APA Style CENTRAL webinar

This 1-hour webinar, recorded Feburary 7, 2017, covers content, features, and tools in APA Style CENTRAL that can be incorporated into your research, writing or instruction.

is presented with librarians and other platform administrators in mind.

See for yourself how APA Style CENTRAL® can help a wide range of academic users at your institution to easily learn and use APA Style! This one-hour webinar introduces librarians to APA’s newest APA Style® product, APA Style CENTRAL®. This introduction will include a content overview and demonstration of features.

  • Get acquainted with the APA Style CENTRAL platform
  • Tour the learning resources available through APA Style CENTRAL
  • Learn how you can use the platform to support all users of APA Style — students, faculty, writing center staff, and researchers
  • Get information about administrative tools for APA Style CENTRAL such as LMS integration and the Admin Center

Please feel free to link this video or any of our APA Style CENTRAL playlists in your library websites, LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

For information on attending this and other webinars please see our APA Style CENTRAL training web page.