From the Deck of . . . the MLA ’17 Sunrise Seminar

Posted on June 16, 2017June 13, 2017 by Patti Avellanet in For Librarians

At the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting last month, we presented a Sunrise Seminar training session. The session included a review of the fields and features added to PsycINFO® in August 2016, and incorporated an explanation of how and why you might use the Medical Subject Headings, or MeSH terms, that have been added to PsycINFO. This demo was originally developed for our presentation earlier this year at the Association for College & Research Libraries Conference, and was recapped in a blog post in early April.

We also demonstrated how how a student would use the APA Style CENTRAL® Writing Center to write a paper. The slides from the session include plenty of screenshots, but you can see the process in action by viewing the recording of our webinar, Writing Papers in APA Style CENTRAL. The entire session is under 30 minutes, but you can skip straight to the demo using this link.

You can review the slides from our MLA 2017 Sunrise Seminar on our SlideShare account. In addition to the sections described here, you’ll also find some sample search scenarios for PsycTESTS®.

From the Deck of . . . The ACRL 2017 Databases Lunch & Learn

Posted on April 4, 2017April 3, 2017 by Patti Avellanet in For Librarians

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 the PsycINFO SlideShare account.
At the recent Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) conference, we presented two training sessions. During our APA Databases Lunch & Learn, we looked at some of the fields and features added to PsycINFO® in August 2016. Among the search examples for this section of the presentation was an explanation of how and why you might use the Medical Subject Headings, or MeSH terms, that have been added to PsycINFO.

In PubMed, a health sciences database from the National Library of Medicine, articles are indexed with MeSH terms, which work similarly to the Index Terms in PsycINFO. (For a more in-depth explanation, see our post PsycINFO Expert Tip: Searching by Keyword, Index Term, and More.) About 30% of the articles indexed in PsycINFO are also included in PubMed. When you find one of those articles in PsycINFO, you’ll now see the MeSH terms assigned by PubMed, as well as the article’s PubMed Identifier (PMID). How can this information be of use to your health sciences researchers and students?

Researchers are increasingly aware that research relevant to their interests may be available outside their specialty. For example, perhaps you’re working with someone who’s looking at brain inflammation and its impact on mood. They’ve found some information in PubMed, but would like to recreate their search in PsycINFO to find additional resources from psychology.

One easy way to find the relevant terms from the PsycINFO Thesaurus is to start by looking at some of the useful articles the researcher has already found in PubMed. By using the PMIDs to find some of those articles in PsycINFO, you can review the MeSH terms and the PsycINFO Subject Headings assigned to the article. From there, you can rebuild the search using terms from the PsycINFO Thesaurus.

To review the full search example, take a look at the slides from our APA Databases Lunch & Learn. You’ll also find some sample search scenarios for PsycTESTS®, and a brief review of APA Style CENTRAL®.

From the Deck of . . . The ALA Midwinter 2017 Lunch & Learn

Posted on February 13, 2017February 13, 2017 by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

We recently presented our Lunch & Learn training session at the American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting & Exhibition. During the session, we reviewed PsycTESTS®, an extensive collection of psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other instruments. Over 42,000 tests are represented in the database, and a full or partial version of the measure is available for about 50% of them.

PsycTESTS is a wonderful resource for students learning to conduct measures, or researchers developing their own tests. In addition, many of the tests included can be used for non-commercial research and educational purposes, which includes general clinical use. (For more information, see our post How Permissions Work in PsycTESTS.)

During our session at ALA Midwinter, we reviewed the record structure of PsycTESTS, which is very different from a database like PsycINFO®. In PsycINFO, one article is represented by one record, which contains information about the article, taken from the article itself. In PsycTESTS, a test can be represented by multiple records, which contain information about the test, taken from a source document. A source document is typically a journal article, book chapter, technical report, or dissertation.

Visual representation of PsycTESTS record structure at http://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psyctests

A visual representation of the record structure for PsycTESTS.

Every test in PsycTESTS is represented by a Test Master Record, which displays basic information about the test. You’ll also see either a Test Development Record or a Test Primary Data Record, which provide additional information about the test.

The Test Master Record provides basic information about the instrument and links to other records, which contain information from source documents, such as a journal article or book chapter:
- Test Development Record: provides information describing the development of the measure
- A Primary Data Record is provided for commercial tests, or tests with no source document (for example, a historical test)

A small number of tests will have an additional record or records:

Test Use Record: provides information describing a new use of the measure (for example, an article that reports on using a test developed for adults with children)
Test Review Record: provides information about an evaluation of the measure

The way these records are connected, and how they interact with one another, varies widely depending on how you access PsycTESTS: via APA PsycNET®, EBSCOhost, Ovid, or ProQuest. To see what a PsycTESTS record looks like on your platform, take a look at the slides from our Lunch & Learn. You’ll also find some sample search scenarios for PsycTESTS.

The presentation also included an overview of incorporating APA Style CENTRAL® into your teaching, and a look at some new and forthcoming publications.

Related Resources:

A “Getting Started with PsycTESTS” guide is available for each of the major vendor platforms. This handout demonstrates the various fields and features in PsycTESTS. To download or link to this resource, visit our Search Guides page.

From the Deck of . . . The ALA Annual 2016 Lunch & Learn

Posted on July 20, 2016July 18, 2016 by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

We recently presented our Lunch & Learn training session at the American Library Association Annual Conference & Exhibition. One of the items we covered in this session was a review of working with cited references in PsycINFO® on all of the major vendor platforms: APA PsycNET®, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest.

Being able to successfully navigate cited references data allows you to identify where a particular piece of research fits into the larger research continuum. You can see what led to that research, and how it influenced the research that followed. It’s also a great way to help a student who’s brainstorming dissertation topics, or a researcher looking for a new area to explore. Continue reading →

From the Deck of . . . the Mosaic ’16 Sunrise Seminar

Posted on June 17, 2016June 16, 2016 by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

We recently hosted a training session at Mosaic ’16, the joint conference of the Medical Library Association, the Canadian Health Libraries Association, and the International Clinical Librarian Conference.

One of the items we covered in this session was the Tests & Measures field. We started off by describing the field and the information it includes – the topic of a post on this blog a little over a month ago. Then, we did a sample search in PsycARTICLES®, our database of full-text articles from APA-published journals. Continue reading →