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Library
PsycINFO
Available to current Antioch University New England and Antioch Leadership PhD students, staff and faculty only. Log in required. Username is lastname[space]firstname (no nicknames, no middle initials). Password is anne immediately followed by your Antioch ID number (the number found on your Antioch ID card and used to log in to your FirstClass account).
Other Research Tools
- Research Tips
- Journals A-Z List
- RefWorks (free citation management software)
- Need help? Ask a librarian!
About the database
- PsycINFO is a comprehensive index to scholarly literature in psychology.
- You will find references to journal articles; books and book chapters; reports produced by the government, institutions, and universities; and dissertations.
- There is no full text in PsycINFO but virtually every item has an abstract. Finding the full text of items indexed in PsycINFO.
- Journal Coverage - Link to a list of journals indexed in PsycINFO.
When to use PsycINFO
- Any graduate inquiry into a psychological topic must first be done in this database. PsycINFO is the best place to do literature reviews for theses and dissertations and research papers of any length.
- If you just need one or two full text articles, try a full text psychology journal collection such as Proquest Psychology Journals or OhioLINK’s Psychology & Behavioral Sciences database.
- Students in other departments will find PsycINFO very useful. These topics are also covered in PsycINFO:
- organizational psychology and management
- environmental attitudes and preferences
- conservation behavior
- sociobiology and evolutionary topics (human and non-human)
- animal psychology
- cognitive theory
- educational psychology
- forensic psychology
- learning disabilities, etc.
- policy and planning
- forensic psychology
- career development
- If your search inquiry includes any psychological topic, use PsycINFO first.
When to use other databases instead of or in conjunction with PsycINFO
While no other database so completely and thoroughly indexes the psychological literature, many times a second database can expand upon your search topic.
- ERIC: ERIC covers all topics related to education and learning at all levels, including special needs and populations, cognitive topics, etc. ERIC indexes the more applied “teaching” literature, as well as the theoretical. While you will find some redundancy in journal coverage between ERIC and PsycINFO, ERIC does index other documents including books, reports and conference proceedings which are not included in PsycINFO. If a topic has an educational component, both ERIC and PsycINFO should be searched.. Examples of psychology topics commonly searched also in ERIC are: ADD, school counseling, alcohol and other prevention programs, career development, learning theory. Learn more about ERIC.
- ABI/Inform: Use this database with PsycINFO for subjects on management topics, including organizational behavior. ABI is also useful for articles on the medical delivery system, managed care, and the insurance industry. Career development topics are also covered in ABI. Learn more about ABI/Inform.
Finding Full Text
- Journal articles: ANE Library provides patron access to t housands of journals, in print or electronic format. Find out if ANE Library subscribes to a particular journal.
- Books: PsycINFO provides citations for books and book chapters. To find out if we own a book you see mentioned in PsycINFO, look up the book title in our online catalog.
- Dissertations: PsycINFO also indexes dissertations and theses. Those published since 1996 are available free for download in Digital Dissertations (restricted to current ANE students, staff, and faculty only). Learn more about Digital Dissertations.
- If you are in doubt about the availability of any item indexed in PsycINFO, request it using the online Interlibrary Loan form.
Search Tips
- On the PsycINFO Search Page
- Limit Search: Used to specify language, type of document, publication year, etc. Not necessary to use; these limits can be applied to any search phrase using particular field abbreviations. For example, adding “book in dt” to your search phrase will limit your search results to citations for books and eliminate journal articles and dissertations.
- Change Display: Used to specify what information appears in citations. For example, the default citation display in PsycINFO now includes the entire list of references for many items. This can be good to have, as a source of further information. HOWEVER, it can make your initial pass through a list of citations very time-consuming if you have to scroll through lengthy bibliographies (and some of them have over 100 references, ALL of which are included with the citation). Use “Select Fields” in “Change Display” to keep the references from showing. When you have narrowed your search to citations you want to keep (download, email) you can go back to “Change Display” and re-select “References”—they will now be included with your citations. “Change Display” is also good for sorting a list of citations by either Full Text availability or ANE Library holdings, so you can tell what we own more easily.
- Save History: If you have a good search going and get interrupted or want to run it through psycINFO periodically to check for new information, you can save it so you don’t have to recreate it later.
- Load History: If you want to run a saved search.
- Index: Check the Index to decipher field abbreviations (for instance, what does LO stand for? It indicates “population location.”) You can also use the Index to limit your search by particular publication type (such as literature reviews, case studies, empirical studies); population (male, female, inpatient); or age group (infants, young adults). If you want to know whether psycINFO indexes a particular journal, you can search the Index by journal name and then limit your search to a specific journal or journals.
- Thesaurus: This is the list of subject headings (“descriptors“) used in psycINFO. Check the thesaurus before you begin a search to determine the descriptor that most closely matches the subject you are looking for. For instance, psycINFO does not use “marriage therapy” as a subject heading; it uses “marriage counseling.“ BUT it also uses “couples therapy” as a subject heading. “Spouse abuse” is not a subject heading; psycINFO uses “partner abuse.” If you try a search that should work but is not turning up the results you would expect, check the thesaurus to see if there is another term you could use. If you look up “marriage therapy” in the thesaurus, it will tell you “see Marriage Counseling.” The thesaurus will also suggest related terms, broader terms, and narrower terms, which can help you do a more specific search. When you are in the thesaurus you can select a number of terms to be searched simultaneously; useful for creating a search on a broad subject such as substance abuse, which has information under several subject headings (drug abuse, alcohol abuse, heroin addiction, etc.).
- Help: Use the Help screens for tips on creating searches, combining searches, etc.
- Sample Searches
These search phrases and search results illustrate some of the ways to construct searches in psycINFO and ways to revise searches into more specific and more manageable sets of citations.Search Phrase # of Hits Comments/Explanation marriage therapy 157 “marriage therapy” probably not correct descriptor (subject heading) -- does not retrieve many citations marriage counseling in de [descriptor]
couples therapy in de [descriptor]3247
1010
Thesaurus gave correct descriptor as “marriage counseling.” Also uses “couples therapy.” marriage counseling in de OR couples therapy in de 4101 Search for BOTH descriptors for broadest coverage of the subject marriage counseling in su [subject] 3366 Searching phrase as “subject” includes citations which also use “marriage counseling” as a key concept -- increases result set slightly. marriage counseling in de and journal* in dt [dt=document type] 2052 Makes set somewhat smaller by retrieving only those citations which are for journal articles. See Boolean Operators for further explanation. marriage counseling in de and alcoholism in de 58 Focuses in on marriage counseling for couples with a particular problem. “Marriage counseling” as subject on its own is too broad -- retrieves too many citations without further focusing. - Search Fields - These are some commonly used search fields and their abbreviations. (A “field” is a particular part of the citation which contains a specific piece of information.) These fields can be very helpful in narrowing your search to get specific results. To search for a term in a particular field use either the word “in” or the equal sign. For example, use either smith-stephen* in au OR au=smith-stephen* to retrieve citations which list variations of Stephen Smith in the author field. Note: PsycINFO is not case-sensitive so it is not necessary to use capital letters when searching.
- au author
- ti title
- de descriptor
- dt document type (journal, book, chapter, dissertation). Check the Index to see what the choices are.
- pt publication type (literature review, case study, meta-analysis) Check the Index to see what the choices are.
- ag age group (infancy, childhood, adolescence, aged) Check the Index to see what the choices are.
- Boolean Operators - These are the most common terms used to combine or eliminate concepts in a search.
- and Requires all terms to be present in a resulting citation; used
to NARROW a search; DECREASES the number of citations retrieved.
- family therapy in de 11,800 citations
- family therapy in de and eating disorders in de 74 citations
- or Requires only one of the terms to be present; used to EXPAND a search; INCREASES the number of citations retrieved.
- marriage counseling in de 3150 citations
- couples therapy in de 900 citations
- marriage counseling in de or couples therapy in de 3900 citations
- not Eliminates a term or a particular set of search results. Used to NARROW a search. Can also used to eliminate dissertations from a list of citations, since often they are not useful for shorter assignments and can be difficult to obtain. DECREASES the number of citations retrieved.
- eating disorders in de 4300 citations
- eating disorders in de not anorexia in de 3700 citations
- and Requires all terms to be present in a resulting citation; used
to NARROW a search; DECREASES the number of citations retrieved.
Using RefWorks with PyscINFO
RefWorks is a bibliographic management program which will automatically create properly formatted in-text citations and bibliographies. General information on accessing and using RefWorks. RefWorks is available free to current students, staff, and faculty only.
- To save psycINFO citations for export to RefWorks:
- Do a search in psycINFO and mark citations you wish to save for export to RefWorks. Note: citations must display with SHORT field names (such as AU and TI instead of AUTHOR and TITLE) so they can be exported. RefWorks cannot recognize citations which do not have these short “field tags.”
- Click on the “Save” icon.
- Under “Which records” select “Marked.” (If you wish to save all the citations, you may select “All records in the current search” instead.)
- Under “Which fields” select “Displayed fields.”
- Click on the Save button and save file to your computer. Remember WHERE you save it and what filename you give it.
- The file must save with a .dat extension for import into RefWorks.
- To import these citations into RefWorks:
- Go into your personal account in RefWorks.
- Click on “Import.”
- You must tell RefWorks what kind of citations you are importing and where they came from:
- Select SilverPlatter as your Import Filter/Data Source.
- Select PsycINFO as the Database.
- If you want the citations to land in a particular folder in RefWorks, specify the folder. This is optional; citations will always automatically land in the Last Imported folder also.
- Under “Import Data from the following Text File“ browse for and select the file of citations you just created and saved from PsycINFO.
- Click on “Import.” The progress in importing is measured by one * for each reference. RefWorks will notify you when the import is complete.
- Click “View Last Imported Folder” to see imported citations.
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Last Updated: 4/21/08