PsycINFO and Other Psychology Resources

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Online Catalog

You may not want to search for books on your topic, since PsycINFO covers chapters and books from 1987 to the present. Check the currency of the material you find in our catalog. If you do use the catalog, here are a few hints:

• The subject and title searches work like browsing indexes.
• The Annual Review of Psychology (main stacks at 150.58 An78) provides critical articles reviewing significant developments in psychology.

Reference

Reference materials will give you background information on a topic, and direction as to where to research next. The following resources may be helpful.

Encyclopedias:

R 150.3 En19k           Encyclopedia of Psychology (APA)
R 150.3 En19r           Encyclopedia of Human Behavior
R 616.89003 N72e2   Encyclopedia of Schizophrenia and other Psychotic Disorders

There are many dictionaries and one-volume encyclopedias. Here are just a few:

R 150.3 C818d         Dictionary of Psychology
R 154.603 En19c      Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreaming
R 155.6 En19k         Encyclopedia of Adult Development

We have several books that list and review tests:

R 016.1512 B937m      The Mental Measurements Yearbook
R 016.37126 B937t6    Tests in Print VI
R 150.287 C738h        Comprehensive Handbook of Psychological Assessment
R 152.287 En19f          Encyclopedia of Psychological Assessment

PsycINFO 

PsycINFO, a database produced by the American Psychological Association, is the premier research tool in psychology. PsycINFO contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, dissertations, and technical reports in the field of psychology. Journal coverage spans from 1887-present, and includes material selected from more than 2,500 periodicals written in nearly 30 languages.

Searching PsycINFO

Performing Searches:

• Advanced Search: Use the advanced search for more searching options.
• Boolean Search Option: Use OR, AND, NEAR, and WITH (see below).
• Or: family or stress retrieves records containing either "family," "stress," or both.
• And: family and stress retrieves records that contain both "family" and "stress."
• Near: family n5 stress retrieves records where "family" occurs within 5 words of stress.
• With: family w5 stress retrieves records where "family" occurs within 5 words before "stress."
• Phrases: use quotes to keep phrases intact:  "family stress"

Word variants:

• Truncation: the symbol (*) attached to the end of the word will retrieve all different endings to that word. Ex: trauma* retrieves trauma, traumas, and traumatic.
• Wildcard: the symbol (?) can substitute for one character or none. Ex: wom?n will retrieve woman and women.

Fields:

• You can search in a specific field, such as title or journal name, by typing in the abbreviation of the field followed by your search terms. Ex: TI therapy; JN journal of personality
• To narrow your search use the limit fields displayed below the search box. Hint: Automatically limit to English unless you want to retrieve multi-lingual publications.

Thesaurus and Indexes:

• The thesaurus is an alphabetical list of all terms, called subject headings or descriptors, PsycINFO uses to index records. Use the thesaurus to look up synonyms, related terms, and preferred terms.
• The indexes (publication type, author, and publication) allows you to look up, select, and search for variations of a term. This is useful if you are uncertain of the spelling of a term (such as a name) or how the terms appear in the database.
• The cited references index allows you to see how many times an article is cited in PsycINFO, and links you to those articles.

• Check our catalog or Journals List to see if we have your item.
• If we don’t have it, check UCA’s catalog, Bearcat, for books, or their A to Z Journals List for journals.
• If neither Hendrix nor UCA has the journal or book, fill out an interlibrary loan form online or at the reference desk. This process may take one to two weeks, so be sure you start your research early!
• Due to such high volume of ILLs in recent years we now advise a limit of 10 ILL items per project. You may want to investigate using UAMS’s library in Little Rock.

Some Fields in PsycINFO 

AF Author Affiliation
AB Abstract
AG Age Group
AI Intended Audience
AN Accession Number
AU Author
CC Classification Code
CF Conference Information
DE Descriptors (Subjects)
DI Digital Object Number
DN Dissertation Order Number
DT Date of Publication
ED Release Date
FC Form Content Type
IB ISBN
IP Issue/Part
IS ISSN
JN Journal Name
KW Keywords
LA Language
MJ Major Concepts
MR Methodology
PB Publisher
PL Location
PO Population
PT Publication Type
PY Publication Year
RV Peer Reviewed
RY Book Reprint Year
SO Source Title
ST Series Title
SU Subjects
TC Table of Contents
TI Title
VI Volume
YR Publication Year

Last Modified on 1/23/2013