Creating Instructionally Robust Psychology Research Guides: Instructionally Robust Guide

• PsycINFO has citations for articles, book chapters, and dissertations
• Nearly 2500 journals are indexed in PsycINFO, and 99% of these journals are peer-reviewed.
• PsycINFO is updated weekly
• More information about PsycINFO

This short video will show you how to get to the full text of articles from library databases like PsycINFO

Limits can be selected after you have constructed your search. Click on "additional limits" under the search box to see all available limits. Some of the most useful limits are

• Methodology
• Publication Type
• Publication Year
• Age Group

Learn to refine and focus searches by identifing and combining subject descriptor terms.

AND and OR

AND combines your selected terms to find citations with all of those terms. OR looks for any of the terms you selected.

Explode

"Explode" means that you are searching for a particular subject heading and all the narrower subject headings underneath it. For example, if you search:

• Social Interaction [Explode]

You are also searching its narrower terms, such as:

• Encouragement
• Interpersonal Interaction
• Physical Contact

Focus

Most citations in PsycINFO are assigned 5-7 subject headings. 2 or 3 of those subject headings are likely to be designated as the primary focus of the article. Selecting "Focus" means you will only retrieve those articles that have that subject heading marked as a primary focus (subject*). While "focus" can be useful occasionally, often it will limit your search too much and you will have very few articles to select from. 

Learn the key differences between searching for articles in PsycINFO and Google Scholar.