Reference at Newman Library

Tag: PsycINFO

PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES Now Have New Names

APA has renamed their collections of databases so that APA is now part of the name. They have also decided to stop putting “INFO” and “ARTICLES” in all caps:

  • PsycINFO –> APA PsycInfo
  • PsycARTICLES –> APA PsycArticles

I’ve relabeled the old database links as “APA PsycArticles” and “APA PsycInfo” and moved them from the “O-P” tab on the main databases page to the “A-B” tab. Any research guides that featured links to these databases will now see the new names displayed.

For the benefit of those who will need to learn the new names, I’ve added temporary database links on the “O-P” tab of the A-Z database page with the following links:

  • “PsycINFO (now called APA PsycInfo)”
  • “PsycARTICLES (now called APA PsycArticles)”

These temporary links that indicate a name change will be removed by the end of the year. This summer, I’m planning to update my video tutorials on how to use APA PsycInfo so that the new name is used. Please update your research guides as needed (NB: the database links themselves on your guides have already been updated).

Reference Question about Interpersonal Spacing

We’re getting that question again from SPS students who need to find articles on interpersonal spacing. From what I can tell, the students are required to find research articles on interpersonal spacing that were published in the past ten years. Going to PsycINFO and just searching “interpersonal spacing” doesn’t get you far enough, apparently. Instead, recommend to students that they set up the search this way:

Search box 1: type “personal space” and select “SU Subjects” from the search option

Search box 2: type “interpersonal” but leave search option to default setting of “Select a field (optional)”

Here’s a screenshot of the search boxes:

PsycINFO--interpersonal spacing

The trick is not to fall into the trap of assuming that “interpersonal spacing” is the best search. “Personal space” is the subject descriptor that gets used for all the articles that do happen to have “interpersonal spacing.” In the thesaurus, the scope note for “personal space” says the term is defined as “Minimal spatial distance preferred by an individual in his/her relations with others.”

PsycINFO--personal space

By adding “interpersonal” as an additional search word, the results are a bit more focused on the concept of “interpersonal spacing” than if you just found all the articles that have the “personal space” subject descriptor.

After you run the search, change the sort option from “Relevance” to “Date Newest”

PsycINFO--interpersonal spacing--sorting results

 

Big Research Projects in PSY 4012

This spring, you’ll likely be encountering students in reference asking for help with an assignment in PSY 4012 (Evolution of Modern Psychology) where they are expected to write a textbook chapter on one of these five broad sets of questions:

  1. What is consciousness and how have psychologists dealt with it? Does psychology need biology to understand consciousness, or does biology merely provide a distraction and lead us into nonproductive directions about how to understand consciousness? Can psychology deal with both mind and body in a coherent way, or must one be basic and the other subservient? What alternatives have philosophy and psychology provided to deal with the issue?
  2. How important has evolutionary theory been in the history of psychology? Have psychologists really understood evolutionary theory and its implications, or have many of them worked from a distorted idea of what evolution theory is about?
  3. Has psychology been a more productive science when viewed in terms of reductionism or in terms of holism? What has been gained and what has been lost with each of these two competing perspectives? Should psychology finally choose one or the other of these perspectives, or is there an advantage to having a tension between the two among scientific psychologists? What is at stake when someone proposes that psychology should be eclectic and include both perspectives?
  4. Should there be a separate science of psychology, or did the idea of separate science of psychology emerge only because of historical and philosophical conditions in Germany at the time the first psychology lab was opened in 1879? Was this beginning merely an accident of history, or can one explain why such an event would have taken place then? What sense does it make for psychology to be both a science and a collection of applied practices, such as clinical psychology, school psychology, etc. Should we continue with the same set of boundaries between the separate sciences that we have today, or should we re-think the existence of a separate science of psychology that combines both the scientific and the applied?
  5. Does psychology require the assumption of determinism if it is to be a science? Can it include the notion of free will as well as determinism? Can it deal with both determinism and free will at the same time in a coherent way?

I just taught workshops for two of the sections of this class and want to share the strategy I was recommending to them and the handout I gave them:

  • Start with Gale Virtual Reference Library. Look up the big concepts (reductionism, free will, evolutionary psychology,  etc.) in multiple encyclopedias (especially ones in psychology and philosophy) to get intro to the topic, search words, names of leading researchers and theorists.
  • Go next to find literature review articles in PsycINFO. Also browse the Thesaurus in PsycINFO to identify preferred terms and to discover additional related ones.
  • Then search broadly across PsycINFO for articles, etc.

Here is the handout all the students in my workshops received. 

Let me know if you have any questions or if you want to refer any students to see me.

How to Find Empirical Studies in PsycINFO

A common question in reference comes from psychology students who need to find an article that reports on the results of an empirical study. I’ve put together an annotated screenshot on the Psychology research guide that shows you how to use the Methodology limiter in PsycINFO to find articles tagged with “Empirical Study.”

The methodology limiters have a lot of other goodies. In addition to the Literature Review one that I mentioned in an earlier blog post), there are ones for:

  • Clinical case study
  • Longitudinal study
  • Treatment Outcome/Clinical Trial

For more, see the “APA Databases Methodology Field Values” page.

Finding Literature Reviews on Psychology Topics

Working with one of the professors in the psychology department who expects her students to find literature reviews on various topics in psychology, I put together a how-to guide as part of my larger psychology research guide. The secret to finding these types of articles is to use the Methodology limiter in PsycINFO. There are two limiters that will help students find these types of articles:

  • Literature Review
    • PsycINFO definition: “Survey of previously published literature on a particular topic to define and clarify a particular problem; summarize previous investigations; identify relations, contradictions, gaps, and inconsistencies in the literature; and suggest the next step in solving the problem.”
  • Systematic Review
    • PsycINFO definition: “A form of literature review that comprehensively identifies, appraises, and synthesizes all relevant research on a specifically formulated question.”

A related Methodology limiter is “Meta Analysis,” which PsycINFO defines as “Statistical analysis of previously published empirical data.”

Full Text Problem in PsycINFO (updated)

Since yesterday afternoon, there’s been a notable problem with PsycINFO. If you run a search, you’ll see that none of your results will include full text, only Find it! links from the SFX service. EBSCO support told me on the phone yesterday that this was a known problem (i.e., it’s a widespread problem for all PsycINFO subscribers). As a workaround, try the Find it! links as a means to tracking down full text or use our our journals search feature in the yellow search bar of our website.

This problem is not appearing in any other EBSCOhost database (including PsycARTICLES). As soon as EBSCO fixes this, I’ll post a new entry on the blog (with any luck, that fix will come through later today).

UPDATE 11/18/2013: The problem has been fixed by EBSCO.