Research Guides: Psychology 271: PSY 271

Key Databases in Psychology

PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Find psychology research from peer-reviewed journals, books, and dissertations. INCLUDES content from PsycARTICLES and PsycBOOKS.
PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new window
Full-text articles from scholarly journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window Searches across numerous publishers and institutional sources for reports, dissertations and theses, and scholarly publications. Using this link will indicate which Google Scholar results are available in full-text through UNK databases or other free/open-access sources.

Building Your Search

Boolean Operators

Search terms are joined with words called Boolean operators. These are in all caps. If you use the Advanced Search option in PsycInfo, you can set options on the left hand side, between boxes.

OR: Using OR expands your results - results have either term or both:

AND: Using AND narrows results - results only have both terms:

NOT: Using NOT excludes a term. This is used less frequently. Use it if there is one word that refers to multiple concepts and you only want a specific concept.

Choosing a Boolean Operator

When do you use which term?

Join synonyms with OR. Ex: children OR adolescents OR juveniles OR teenagers
Join different search terms/concepts with AND. Ex: Children AND note taking
Narrow in your search with NOT. Ex: Children NOT adolescents

Combine these search strategies and terms to make your search. You can use parentheses to group terms together. Ex: (children OR adolescents) AND (note taking OR study strategies)

Search Tips

Use quotation marks to search a phrase. Ex: "note taking" Try both with and without quotes, as searching "note taking" might exclude "note-taking"
Check your spelling!
Try synonyms - a thesaurus can be helpful. Remember, there's one built into PsycInfo
THERE IS NO PERFECT SEARCH. If you don't get the results you want with the first terms you try, try other options and other combinations.

Linking to Full Text Articles

Watch this video to learn how to locate full-text articles from a database citation. Note that Full Text Finder is no longer used. You will now see "Click Here to Check for Full Text".

Class Resources

Tutorials

Need some help putting together searches or with other aspects of Psychology research? Check out our other Psychology tutorials or our Research Tips and Tricks tutorial.