Psychology: PsycINFO Help

Construct your search using the keywords and/or phrases relevant to your topic. 

• Use OR to search both keywords/phrases
• Quotation marks can be used to search for phrases (e.g. "infant development")
• Truncation searches for variants of a word. Use an asterik (*) at the root (e.g. play* searches for play, plays, playing, player, etc.)
• AND combines the search components to find results with both components in the record

Keyword searching is beneficial particularly when there is a new area of research that has not been assigned a subject heading yet. For example, research on "microaggressions" is fairly new, and the APA has not yet established the term as a formal subject in the database.

What are Subject Headings / Subject Terms / Index Terms? 

The APA labels each item in PsycINFO with a set of subject headings or index terms. Index terms are standardized words or phrases used to describe the idea. Searching with subject headings / index terms means you don't need to figure out all the ways different authors might refer to the same idea, like you need to with keyword searching. 

When you identify an article in PsycINFO that matches your interest, it's a good idea to look at the subject headings assigned to that item and revise your search using the most relevant ones. 

For example, the article "Children teach methods that they could not discover for themselves" has been assigned subject headings describing what the article is about, for example: 

• Child Attitudes (major);
• Childhood Development (major);
• Cognitive Ability (major)

If your interest centered on child attitudes and childhood development, you could use those subject headings to perform a revised search and retrieve similar, relevant results.

For more information about searching with subject headings / index terms, watch the following short tutorial.  

• Nearly 2500 journals are indexed in PsycINFO, and 99% of these journals are peer-reviewed. 
  
• PsycINFO is updated weekly
• More information about PsycINFO

Use limits to filter results for specific aspects of the resource such as particular age groups, research methodology, or publication type. These selections help you quickly narrow down results to items most relevant for you (and your assignment!). 

Our article databases are enabled with a Find It @ PSU green button which connects you from the database you are searching to the holdings of specific articles in our Library.

If the article citation in your search results does not include a link to the full text PDF file, use the green Find It @ PSU button to check online or print availability via the Library catalog.

If the PSU Library does not hold the article online, you can request it through Interlibrary Loan & Article Delivery.