To help classify studies, PsycINFO has a search field called "SU Subjects". To see it, go to PsycINFO and click New Search. Click the button that says “Select a Field” and scroll down about 5 spaces to where it says “SU Subjects”. If you select that choice, then anything you type in the search field to the left of that button will be searched according to the general topic (“Subject”) that a study addresses: racism, mathematical ability, etc. There are a limited number of subject headings that researchers can choose from when they classify their study. For example, there is a subject for "mathematical ability" but not for "quantitative ability" or even for "math ability." Knowing the subject terms in your research area can be very helpful because they enable you to search for articles by their topics rather than by specific words that might appear in the title or abstract. The question is, how do you find out what the subject terms are? There are two answers: 1) They are listed in PsycINFO's citations of other articles (along with the abstract, publisher, etc.), and 2) You can find subject terms using PsycINFO's Thesaurus feature.
Once you find a reference that looks useful, you can use the subject terms listed in its citation to find more articles. For example, let's say you search for "road rage" using the general Select a Field search field. One result is:
Benavidez, Daniela C.; Flores, Antonio Marcos; Fierro, Inmaculada; Álvarez, F. Javier; Accident Analysis and Prevention, Vol 50, Jan, 2013 pp. 848-853. Publisher: Elsevier Science; [Journal Article]
Subjects: Aggressive Driving Behavior; Alcoholism; Cannabis; Drug Dependency; Motor Traffic Accidents; Adolescence (13-17 yrs); Adulthood (18 yrs & older); Young Adulthood (18-29 yrs); Thirties (30-39 yrs); Middle Age (40-64 yrs); Male; Female
Look at that first subject term: Aggressive Driving Behavior. That sounds like a good synonym for road rage, and it is probably what road rage researchers have chosen for their label. If you wanted more articles like this one, you could use that subject term in your search by entering it in the search box and selecting "SU Subjects" for the "search in" option to the right of the search window.
What if you don't have any articles yet? You can search the Thesaurus directly to help you find Subject terms.
Click on the Thesaurus link (along the top of the EBSCOhost page) and entering "road rage" into the "Browse" field (not the search field at the top) and also selecting "Relevancy Ranked". This will give you a list of subject terms, sorted by relevancy to your search term. The result "Road Rage Use Aggressive Driving Behavior" comes up. This indicates that research on road rage is often placed under the subject category of "aggressive driving behavior." To use this information, you would go back to the Advanced Search page and enter "Aggressive driving behavior" and specify "SU Subjects" as the search field. Note: To find more articles, it's a good idea to do two searches: using the original term (road rage, in this case) under “Select a Field”, and then later just using the subject term (aggressive driving behavior) under “SU Subjects”.