During your time here at Richmont, you will spend a great many hours reading and responding to current research in psychology and the other 
behavioral sciences. The ability to locate, synthesize, and interpret relevant findings on a given topic is one of the key skills you will need to develop in order to be successful, not just as a student, but also in your career as a mental health practitioner. As a counselor, you will need to remain apprised of current trends in the rapidly-changing field of the behavioral sciences, as well as be capable of locating relevant, peer-reviewed sources to support your diagnoses and treatment plans. Learning how to properly locate and evaluate research is a lifelong skill, and the first step to developing this skill is to learn how to search databases.
But database searching can be intimidating and counter-intuitive, and most students have relatively little experience using them effectively. We are all more or less familiar with how to find information online by conducting a simple Google search, so when the time comes to rassle up a few sources for a research project, we often resort to typing a few terms into the simple search bar and hoping for the best. This guide is meant to help you move beyond this approach by helping you to understand both how databases work and how you can narrow your searches with the Advanced Search feature, by using controlled vocabularies, Boolean operators, and the like.
In this LibGuide, we will review separate strategies for searching the different types of databases available to Richmont students through Galileo, specifically the databases offered through EBSCO and ProQuest.
This LibGuide will focus in on EBSCO and ProQuest databases, but the tips you learn here will be helpful for all database searching anywhere. We will include a mixture of video and textual tutorials to help you through the process.
A database is a searchable, structured collection of information. For the purposes of this LibGuide, we will consider academic databases of the kind created to facilitate research and exploration, but it is worth noting that database technology plays an integral role in all kinds of information management, from social media profiles to online shopping to the record-keeping systems of hospitals, libraries, and, of course, counseling centers. Databases are not just a product of the academic world; they are everywhere you look.
There are three broad types of databases which you will use in your research: full-text databases, bibliographic, or index-only databases, and mixed databases.
|
Bibliographic, or Index-only Databases |
Full-Text Databases |
Mixed Databases |
|
An index-only database contains citations and descriptions of resources (books, journal articles, videos, etc.), but not the resources themselves. |
A full-text database contains only the books and articles to which the database has full-text access. In a full-text database, you can read what you find right away, without any extra searching.
|
Mixed databases include a "mixture" of indexed citations and full-text resources.
|
|
Examples: APA PsycINFO, ERIC, the Richmont Library Catalog |
Examples: ProQuest's Psychology Database, PsycARTICLES
|
Examples: EBSCO's Academic Search Complete |
Bibliographic, or index-only databases tend to be the most comprehensive of all database types. That is, they try to contain entries for all or most of the relevant research in a given field. For example, the American Psychological Institute's PsycINFO database indexes roughly 4 million citations and abstracts from many thousands of books and periodicals going back to the 1800s, meaning that it includes descriptions for almost all modern research (in English) in psychology and the behavioral sciences since the field's inception. If you want to find a list of everything that has ever been written on your topic, an index-only database is the best place to start your search.
The downside of an index-only database, is that once you find the citation and description for a resource, you have to go somewhere else to find it. A library catalog is an index-only database, and if you look up a book on a library catalog, for instance, you can read a few things about it--what it's about, when it was written, who wrote it, what the cover looks like, etc. But if you want to read the book, you're going to have to find it on the shelves. Similarly, if you find an article on PsycINFO which seems interesting and relevant to your topic, you're going to have to go find that article, either in a physical copy of the journal, or by searching a different full-text or mixed academic database. But at least now you know what to look for and where to find it.
Full-text databases are databases which only include resources that you can view immediately and in their entirety. When browsing a full-text database, you know that you have access to view everything returned by your searches, not just abstracts or citations of them. This is much more convenient, of course, than the multi-step process of locating the citation on an index-only database, deciding whether or not the text will be relevant to your search, and then having to go and find it somewhere else.
The downside to a full-text database is that they're not anything like comprehensive, and typically contain only a fraction of the resources published on a particular subject. When you search a full-text database, you are only seeing results from books and journals that the database has access to, so you don't have any idea about how many resources might be falling through the cracks. There might be crucially important research out there, that you're just not able to see.
That is why it is normally best practice to search a full-text database in conjunction with a bibliographic database. It might seem tempting and convenient to only search a full-text database, but it will never give you the complete picture.
Mixed databases are databases which include a mix of full-text resources and indexed resources. Some of the articles on a mixed database are available to be read online right away, and some are not. Most of the time, if is possible to search a mixed database in "full-text" mode, that is, only returning the full-text results in the database.
The most basic set of tools offered by the advanced search feature are the Boolean search operators (AND, OR, NOT). If you learn nothing else about databases from this LibGuide, learn how to employ Boolean search operators to limit or expand your search, by combining or excluding certain search terms from your query.
AND - The 'AND' operator narrows the search by requiring that both terms be present in the item for it to show up in the results page.
For example, a search for cognitive behavioral therapy AND anxiety will only return items that contain both terms.
OR - The 'OR' operator expands the search by returning all items which contain any or all of the search terms.
For example, a search for cognitive behavioral therapy OR anxiety will return all articles that include cognitive behavioral therapy but not anxiety, all articles that include anxiety but not cognitive behavioral therapy, and all articles which contain both terms.
NOT - The 'NOT' or AND NOT operator narrows the search by returning only the items which contain one search term but not the other.
For example, a search for cognitive behavioral therapy NOT anxiety will return only the articles which include the term Cognitive Behavioral Therapy but that don't include the term anxiety.
You can use Boolean operators in the simple search function simply by including an all-caps Boolean operator between your search terms:
You can also you parentheses '( )" to control the order in which your Boolean operators are resolved by the database. Items within the parentheses are resolved first. For example:
In this case, the search will return all items related to Cognitive behavioral therapy that do not include information about anorexia or anxiety.
If you want to return only publications containing an exact phrase in a specific order, use quotation marks (" "). Quotation marks instruct the database that you are looking for a specific phrase, not just any item which contains any of the words of your search query.
For example, if you search for young adults on PsycINFO, your search will return all items with the words "young" and "adults" in any order in which they appear. However, if you use quotation marks, you will only return items with that particular phrase. This is a great way to narrow your search significantly, and weed out non-relevant results.
A quick search on PsycINFO shows that young adults without quotation marks returns a whopping 208,025 results, while "young adults" returns "only" 41,654. In both cases, you will want to use the Boolean operators to further refine your search, but you can already see how the simple use of quotation marks have reduced the total search results by a factor of five.
Finally, you can use the truncation symbol (*) and the wildcard symbol (?) to search for all variant forms of the same word.
The truncation (*) symbol stands for all the potential alternate endings belonging to a particular stem. For example, a search for counsel* would return items with the words counsel, counselor, counselors, counselor's, counseling, etc.
The wildcard symbol (usually ?, but can also be * or # depending on the database) stands for alternate letters within a particular stem. For example, a search for wom?n will return results for either woman or women.
The most basic problem when beginning a basic keyword search is deciding which words or phrases to search for.
Imagine you're looking for research on the effects of keeping a diary on patient outcomes in cognitive behavior therapy. What search terms should you use? "Journaling?" "Journal writing?" "Diary method?" "Logging?" The problem is, using any one of these search terms may return some relevant results but make other resources which employ slightly different terminology completely invisible. Different authors can refer to the same concept in many different ways. This issue is compounded when you take into account how rapidly acceptable terminology can change over time--what would have been normal terminology one decade might become antiquated, even offensive over time (think of the word "hysteria," which once-upon-a-time was a perfectly respectable clinical diagnosis, but now is seldom used).
One solution to this problem is to utilize a controlled vocabulary. A controlled vocabulary (or CV) is a list of words and phrases created for the purpose of standardizing terminology. Articles in databases are tagged with particular index terms to ensure that all items related to a specific topic are returned, regardless of the variants in specific vocabulary. The most common controlled vocabulary you will be using is the APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, which is available to you any time search the APA's PsycINFO or PsycARTICLES databases.
By using index terms in your search, you ensure that your search will be comprehensive and return all items related to your topic, and not just the ones which use your specific search terminology.
A controlled vocabulary generally takes the form of a thesaurus, where a "preferred" term is listed alongside a number of synonyms, or variants, which this preferred term is used for. Here is a sample entry:
You'll notice a few things from the outset.
First, there's the term, accompanied by a brief definition.
Second, there's list of "Broader Terms," which are APA-approved index terms for concepts which include "journal writing", but are less specific.
Third, there is a list of "Related Terms," which are index-terms which are conceptually similar to "journal writing."
Finally, there's a list of "used for" terms, which are synonyms for "journal writing" but are not preferred search terms.
Whenever you conduct a keyword search, it is best to begin by identifying the preferred index terms in the controlled vocabulary used in your database. By searching using the preferred vocabulary of your specific database, you can ensure that your search will be comprehensive, and not exclude results which differ only in vocabulary.
Search engines (like Google) can be wonderful resources when conducting research. An online search of a keyword and phrase is a great 
way to discover a new restaurant, to learn about the weather, to read the news, or to find a few quick results on a given topic. Most databases are only updated monthly, and research is a slow process anyway, often requiring months or years to produce a single book or article. If you need information about current events, or wish to search for content on an organization's webpage, a quick search will get you what you need most of the time.
However, when conducting academic research, internet search engines are not usually adequate by themselves for research. There are many reasons for this:
Authority: Anyone can publish anything on the internet. Results returned by a search engine may or may not be credible. A database normally only includes materials written by professional researchers, writers, or experts in a given field. Academic databases carefully evaluate and screen the publications they include for quality, credibility, objectivity, and relevance. Moreover, when you search an academic database, you can limit the results to articles from peer-reviewed journals--good luck doing this on a Google search.
Permanency: Websites come and websites go. An article returned by a search engine one day may be gone the next. Databases offer more continuity than search engines--content changes, of course, but not with the same frequency and randomness as it does online.
Specificity: The internet is not structured like a database, so it's impossible to know why a search returns the results that it does. A database allows you to search for resources by author, subject, title, keyword, etc. Moreover, when searching a database, you can limit (or expand) your search in all kinds of incredibly specific ways, so you know that you're returning all the relevant results for a given search.
With a search engine, you have to wade through pages of results organized according to unknown criteria. You have no idea how comprehensive a given Google search has been--they could be excluding vitally important research from their search page because some inscrutable algorithm believes someone's blog post is more important.
So, now we've learned a little bit about what the three basic kinds of databases are (bibliographic, full-text, and mixed), and about how Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and controlled vocabularies work. Let's pull it all together and show how you can use some of this knowledge in your search process.
First, write down your research question in full. Here's an example:
What is the effect of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy interventions on teens suffering from PTSD?
Now, you can't just type your research question into the search box and expect to get good results. So, let's identify some major concepts from your research question. There are three major concepts in this search question:
1) Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy
2) Teens
3) PTSD
We could just enter these terms in a search box connected by the Boolean operator "AND" and return a few relevant results. However, there are many different synonyms that could be used for each of these three concepts, so we'll need to come up with a list. It might look something like this:
1) Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy OR mindfulness CBT
2) teens OR teenagers OR young adults OR adolescents OR youth
3) PTSD OR posttraumatic stress OR post-traumatic stress OR trauma
Entering all these into the advanced search bar (connected by the Boolean operator "AND") should return almost all of the items which are relevant to our search:
This search would return results that have any of the search terms in the article metadata (that is, the description of the article provided by the database, including subject tags, abstracts or synopses, authors, etc.) If you want to expand your search to include the full-text of the articles themselves (and not just the article descriptions), you could check the box that says "Also search within the full text of the articles" on EBSCO PsycINFO:
This will expand your search to include the full-text of the articles themselves, and not just the article metadata.
Alternately, we could simply look up the preferred terms in the APA Thesaurus and search by subject.
Mindfulness-Based Interventions and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Note, the APA Thesaurus does not include index terms for age groups (like "teens"). However, if you want to search by age group, you can go to the advanced search window and filter the results by age group by selecting the relevant option.
After selecting this option, we have
Both keyword searching and subject returns relevant results. However, the keyword searching returned 30 results, while the subject search (filtered by age) returned only 4. This is partially a result of how highly specialized our search process was: because the search only returned results that contained ALL search terms or subject terms, only a few results were returned. Because PsycINFO is a nearly comprehensive index of resources published in the behavioral sciences in the last century, we can be fairly confident that our database is indeed returning most of the available resources on our topic.
There are a couple potential places we could go from here. 1st, we could broaden our search by removing one of the search terms if we decide that we need our search to return more resources. In this case, I would recommend broadening the search by removing the age group search term. This will expand the search to include all resources about mindfulness-based interventions and posttraumatic stress disorder.
2nd, we could review the bibliographies of the articles returned by our initial search, and see if we can locate any additional resources about our topic.
In any case, we've now learned a little bit about how to search databases. Keep in mind, PsycINFO is an bibliographic, or index-only database, so it will only return citations and descriptions of resources (including abstracts), but not the resources themselves. The advantage to starting your search on a bibliographic database is that you know your search will be nearly comprehensive: PsycINFO indexes virtually all the important research that has occurred in the behavioral sciences in the last hundred years in English, so you know you're not missing anything important.. But you will still need to got to visit a mixed or full-text only database to find the full-text of the resources you need. If you can't locate the articles you find on PsycINFO on one of the databases available to Richmont Graduate University, you can fill out an inter-library loan request here and well try our best to get it to you.
PsycINFO, American Psychological Association's (APA) resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It contains over 2.5 million citations and summaries, and ninety-eight percent of the covered material is peer-reviewed. The database also includes information about the psychological aspects of related fields such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, technology, linguistics, anthropology, business, law, and others. Journal coverage, which spans from 1887 to present, includes international material selected from more than 2,200 periodicals in more than 27 languages. PsycINFO is indexed with controlled vocabulary from APA's Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.
from the American Psychological Association (APA), includes full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific articles in general psychology and specialized basic, applied, clinical, and theoretical research in psychology. The database contains more than 137,000 articles from 66 journals published by the APA, its imprint the Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF), and from allied organizations including the Canadian Psychological Association and the Hogrefe Publishing Group. It includes all journal articles, book reviews, letters to the editor, and errata from each journal. Coverage spans 1894 to present; nearly all APA journals go back to Volume 1, Issue 1. PsycARTICLES is indexed with controlled vocabulary from APA's Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.
APA PsycTests’ expertly-created metadata allows you to instantly find and download instruments for research or teaching. Each record provides a summary of the construct and users can find information on reliability, validity, and factor analysis when that data is reported in the source document. Records include supplemental information such as datasets, answer keys, scoring sheets, and test manuals, when available. Instructors can refer to the record’s Permissions field to easily determine if a test may be used for teaching. APA PsycTests is an excellent resource to reach for when planning a research project or looking for a diagnostic tool to employ in clinical practice.
ProQuest Psychology Journals provides abstracts and indexing for more than 1,000 titles. Users get access to charts, diagrams, graphs, tables, photos, and other graphical elements essential to psychological research.
Additionally, ProQuest Psychology Journals includes 4,000 full-text dissertations representing a range of psychology disciplines including behavioral, clinical, cognitive, developmental, experimental, industrial, personality, physiological, psychobiology, psychometrics, and social psychology. Dissertation content is available for the years spanning 2000 through 2006.
ProQuest Psychology Journals encompasses a wide range of topics from leading psychological and psychosomatic publications. In addition to clinical and social psychology, it also provides coverage of related disciplines including genetics, psychology of business and economics, communication, criminology, addiction, neurology, social welfare, and more. A number of the titles are heavily cited and have a strong set of ISI impact factors. Titles include:
• The American Journal of Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
• The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry
• Development and Psychopathology
• The Psychological Record
Social Science Database offers indexing and full text for hundreds of academic journals, providing extensive coverage across a wide range of social science disciplines including anthropology, communication, criminology, economics, education, political science, psychology, social work, and sociology.
Religion & Philosophy Collection includes more than 300 full-text journals covering topics such as world religions, major denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy, and the history of philosophy
ProQuest Religion provides religious news and information, informative details on doctrines and philosophies, and scholarly reports on religious history. More full-text journals have been added in related religious studies, such as philosophy, ethics, and international perspectives. Many essential full-text titles cannot be found in any other online database.
ATLA Religion Database + ATLA Serials is a mixed database offering full-text access to nearly 400 of the leading journals in the fields of theology, religion, church history, and biblical studies, and indexes articles from 1,200 more. ATLA is the premier database in the field, and should be your first stop for any research project in the School of Ministry.
