New Thesaurus Terms for Searching APA PsycInfo (Winter 2024)

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.

a list of new thesaurus terms
 
screenreaders can view the PDF version of this list 
https://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/training/thesaurus-update-winter-2024.pdf

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.

You can see the full list of Thesaurus changes on our website 

Related Resource: 
YouTube playlist – Using the APA Thesaurus to Find Relevant Articles on a Topic 

New Thesaurus Terms for Searching APA PsycInfo (Spring 2022)

In May, APA added 47 new terms to its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics, including climate and environment, social and cultural issues, eating and nutrition, and mental health. This thesaurus update also includes 34 new cross-referenced terms and 33 revised scope notes.

New terms from this spring update will initially be applied to current content only; following the fall release, the majority of postable terms new for 2022 will be back-mapped to older records.

New terms in the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms as of May 2022
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New Thesaurus Terms for Searching APA PsycInfo

In July 2021, APA added 50 new terms to the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms® to provide more effective searching on current topics including vaccination attitudes, racial trauma, and gender expression.  

Most of these new terms were mapped back and added to records published in APA’s databases in the last 5 years. This Thesaurus update also included 32 new cross-referenced terms, and new and revised scope notes. 

The 9,900+ index terms found in the Thesaurus provide precise and consistent terminology for searching all APA research databases. Using the controlled vocabulary of the Thesaurus means a database search will quickly retrieve all items about a specific concept no matter what keywords the authors 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. 

You can see the full list of Thesaurus changes on our website.  

Related Resource: 
YouTube Tutorial – Using the APA Thesaurus to Find Relevant Articles on a Topic 

From the Deck of: ALA 2021

Welcome to “From the Deck of . . .” a series in which we highlight search demos and other information from the slide decks we create for our conference training sessions.

For the American Library Association’s Annual Conference and Exhibition (Virtual), APA submitted a pre-recorded Exhibitor Showcase Stage presentation.

This Showcase Stage:

You can view or download the slides from our ALA 2021 Exhibitor Showcase Stage below.

Or, if you registered for ALA this year, you can watch the recording.

From the Deck of… ACRL 2019 Lunch & Learn

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 APA Publishing Training SlideShare account.

At the ACRL meeting this month, we presented a Lunch & Learn training session covering updates and search tips for APA’s databases.

The presentation covered the recent thesaurus update, upcoming changes to the PsycTESTS database, and features of the My PsycNET platform manager.

Live demos included the following example searches:

  • using thesaurus terms
  • updating a saved search with the new thesaurus terms
  • using PsycINFO’s tests & measures field to find a known test
  • searching for appended tests
  • PsycTESTS example search

You can review the slides from our ACRL 2019 Lunch & Learn on our SlideShare account.

Related Resources: