PsycINFO Exercise

Searching PsycINFO

PsycINFO is a service that is delivered through several Internet sources. Hanover accesses PsycINFO through a company called EBSCO Information Services.

Let’s say you’re doing a report on the connection between the drug fluoxetine (sold as the brand name Prozac) and suicide. Go to the PsycINFO Advanced Search page (the default page, with three search boxes) and type "fluoxetine" in the first field and "suicide" in the second field, then click on the Search button.

You should get over 300 references, displayed 20 per page. With so many references, where do you start?

Narrowing Your Search

Literature Reviews

When you're new to a topic, it is useful to search only for reviews of studies rather than studies themselves. A review will do much of your work for you by pointing you in the direction of the important studies and the general findings in a particular area.

Options for limiting your search are displayed on the side of the screen. Four are available immediately:

  1. Linked Full Text: check this to only return sources that are immediately available on-line. Usually cuts out too much, so I don't recommend it.
  2. References Available: For some articles, you can get direct access to their Reference List, which is handy to find related articles. Checking this box will only return articles with this feature. Again, usually this cuts out too much.
  3. Open Access: Open Access journals make all their articles available for free. This is nice, but it’s not something that would be helpful when searching for an article.
  4. Publication Date: If you've found more articles than you can use, you could begin by checking out the more recent ones, which will often cite the older studies that are considered classics in that area.

Click on the "Show More" link under the Publication Date slider. You should get a screen with a number of fields that allow you to restrict your search.

Search Options

  1. English: Unless you can read a language other than English, consider checking this box.
  2. Exclude Dissertations: because those are usually expensive to obtain, hundreds of pages long, and are not subjected to the same level of rigorous review as peer-reviewed journal articles, exclude them from your search.
  3. Under Methodology, select both the Literature Review and Meta Analysis options by holding down the control key

Then press Search