Tutorial Thursday: Finding Empirical Articles

It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s extensive library of video tutorials, available on YouTube. Please feel free to link or embed videos or playlists in library websites or LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

The start of any semester brings new students to campus, but fall semester in particular brings with it a wave of students who may find themselves working with new and unfamiliar research tools and terminology.

How to identify and locate peer-reviewed articles is a common question at most academic library reference desks. For some social science classes, students must empirical studies that have been peer-reviewed. To aid students and others who need assistance with – or a refresher on – using PsycINFO® to locate this type of information, we have a brief tutorial on finding peer-reviewed, empirical articles. Continue reading

PsycINFO Expert Tip: Classification Codes

Have you ever noticed the Classification Codes in PsycINFO® and wondered what they’re for?

Screenshot of the Classification Codes limiter on APA PsycNET.

The Classification Codes limiter on APA PsycNET.

Our indexers tag and categorize each item in PsycINFO so searchers can more easily locate exactly what they need. Classification Codes categorize an item, such as a journal article, by its main theme. Each item receives one, sometimes two, Classification Codes. Continue reading

Tutorial Thursday & Translated Topic Guides

It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s extensive library of video tutorials, available on YouTube. Please feel free to link or embed videos or playlists in library websites or LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

Are you familiar with our Topic Guides?

Sample searches from the Management Topic Guide.

Sample searches from the Management Topic Guide.

These brief interdisciplinary handouts are designed to demonstrate how PsycINFO can be used to search for resources in a variety of topic areas. They contain three sample search scenarios, and a list of selected Index Terms.

We’ve created video tutorials based on the Feminism, Management, and Nursing Topic Guides. The videos walk through each of the three sample searches from the guide, demonstrating how to create the searches using the Thesaurus. For each tutorial, you’ll find a version for the APA PsycNET, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest platforms. We’ve gathered them all together into a playlist on our YouTube channel.

A screenshot from the APA PsycNET version of the video tutorial for the Management Topic Guide.

A screenshot from the APA PsycNET version of the video tutorial for the Management Topic Guide.

In addition to creating these tutorials, we recently translated all 20 Topic Guides into 8 languages: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish..

The Spanish version of the Grief & Trauma Topic Guide.

The Spanish version of the Grief & Trauma Topic Guide.

You’ll find the translations linked at the bottom of the Topic Guides webpage.

Related Resources:

Topic Guides pair well with our PsycINFO Quick Reference Guides, which walk the user through searching some of the fundamental fields in PsycINFO, such as Index Term/Subject Heading, Title, Author Name, and more.

Quick Reference Guide for PsycINFO on APA PsycNET
Quick Reference Guide for PsycINFO on EBSCOhost
Quick Reference Guide for PsycINFO on ProQuest
Quick Reference Guide for PsycINFO on Ovid

Please note that print copies of Quick Reference Guides are available to libraries upon request, free of charge. Send a message to psycinfo@apa.org and let us know which guide you’d like, how many, and where to send them.

In Case You Missed It: PsycINFO Quick Reference Guides

Have you looked at our PsycINFO® Quick Reference Guides lately? Many librarians know and love these compact handouts, which use a series of screenshots and captions to reinforce foundational PsycINFO search techniques.

PsycINFO Quick Reference Guide - Keywords panel

An excerpt from the PsycINFO Quick Reference Guide for APA PsycNET(R). This demonstrates how to perform a Keyword search.

Available for PsycINFO on APA PsycNET®, EBSCOhost, ProQuest, and Ovid, the guides cover search basics such as formatting an author search, finding for a journal by title, using the Index Terms or Subjects, and more.

PsycINFO Quick Reference Guides are available as PDFs to easily share via email, or link on your LibGuides, course modules, and other resources.

Printed Quick Reference GuidesLibrarians can also request a quantity of print guides, which APA will ship free of charge! The print guides are formatted into small, accordion-fold handouts – easy to tuck into a bookbag, satchel, or purse for convenient reference no matter where or when you’re searching PsycINFO.

To make a request, please contact us at psycinfo@apa.org. Be sure to include your mailing address, the number of guides you’d like, and indicate which platform you use to access PsycINFO.

 

 

 

 

 

Download or link to the PsycINFO Quick Reference Guide PDF for:

PsycINFO Expert Tip: Finding the Tests in PsycINFO

Have you ever needed to find a psychological test? It can be a surprisingly difficult task! Many of the tests you may know by name, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, are commercial tests. This means those who are interested in using them must pay a fee, and may also need to meet other criteria. If you’re a student who needs a test to review for a class, or if you’re researching how to create an effective psychological measure, you’ll need to find non-commercial tests.

You can, of course, find these types of tests in PsycTESTS®, our database of psychological tests and measures. This database contains information about, and excerpts from, more than 34,000 tests in the behavioral sciences. But what if you don’t have access to PsycTESTS?

Try PsycINFO®! You probably know PsycINFO as a database of journal articles from publishers around the world. PsycINFO doesn’t contain any full-text, but each article included is represented by a record, which has been extensively tagged by APA’s indexers. This information allows you to assess how useful the article may be before you try to find the full text. Continue reading