In November, APA added 41 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including testing & assessment, parental health & stress, and artificial intelligence & digital technology. This Thesaurus update also includes 29 new cross-referenced terms, 227 revised scope notes, and additional edits to hierarchies.
Using the controlled vocabulary of the Thesaurus means a database search will quickly and accurately retrieve all publications related to a specific concept, regardless of the keywords the authors may have used.
It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s library of video tutorials available on the APA Publishing Training 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.
APA thesaurus terms, also called index terms, are controlled vocabulary used in database records to make searching easier and more successful. By standardizing the words or phrases used to represent concepts, you don’t need to try and figure out all the ways different authors could refer to the same concept.
The first video, Building a Search with the APA Thesaurus and Index Terms, is an introduction for all platforms that shows what the thesaurus is, why it is a valuable search tool, and what to do if you can’t find a thesaurus term to fit your research concept.
The second video demonstrates how to use thesaurus terms in an APA PsycInfo search to find relevant articles on a topic, and how to revise a search to include additional thesaurus terms.
Select the video for the platform or website that hosts APA PsycInfo at your institution.
In June, APA added 96 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including employment, education, and diversity. This Thesaurus update also includes 61 new cross-referenced terms, and 122 revised scope notes.
New terms from this Summer update will initially be applied to current content only; following the Fall 2024 release, the majority of 2024’s new postable terms will be back-mapped to older records.
NEW POSTABLE TERMS
Using the controlled vocabulary of the Thesaurus means a database search will quickly and accurately retrieve all publications related to a specific concept, regardless of the keywords the authors may have used.
The Thesaurus tool is found on all platforms as part of APA PsycInfo® and redirects synonyms to the preferred “Use” term to include in your search. Each Thesaurus record includes links to broader terms, narrower terms, and related terms, the year the term was introduced, an historical note if applicable, and a scope note providing definition and application.
In February, APA added 70 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including military psychology; population health; and racial, ethnic and cultural groups and issues. This Thesaurus update also includes 55 new cross-referenced terms, and 75 revised scope notes.
New terms from this winter update will initially be applied to current content only; following the Fall 2024 release, the majority of 2024’s new postable terms will be back-mapped to older records.
Using the controlled vocabulary of the Thesaurus means a database search will quickly and accurately retrieve all publications related to a specific concept, regardless of the keywords the authors may have used.
The Thesaurus tool is found on all platforms as part of APA PsycInfo® and redirects synonyms to the preferred “Use” term to include in your search. Each Thesaurus record includes links to broader terms, narrower terms, and related terms, the year the term was introduced, an historical note if applicable, and a scope note providing definition and application.
In June, APA added 76 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including therapy and treatment; artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks; and research integrity and ethics. This Thesaurus update also includes 55 new cross-referenced terms and 76 revised scope notes.
New terms from this summer update will initially be applied to current content only; following the fall release, the majority of new postable terms for 2023 will be back-mapped to older records.
New terms in the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms as of June 2023
