SR 111. Research Methods and Data Analysis
This webpage identifies and discusses
how to search library search tools for use in SR 111.
- Discuss how to use PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts, and Web of Science to develop bibliography.
- Identify some other possibly relevant resources.
- Show how to obtain copies of papers and other materials
- Inform how to avoid unintentional plagiarism.
NOTE: Librarian contact for this class is Roseann Bowerman, x3053. Please direct any comments about this webpage to Brian Simboli, x5003.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. PSYCINFO
B. SOCIOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS
C . WEB OF SCIENCE/SOCIAL SCIENCE CITATION INDEX
D . OTHER LIBRARY RESOURCES
E . OBTAINING COPIES OF PAPERS &OTHER MATERIALS
F. PLAGIARISM: HOW TO AVOID IT
Getting to PsycINFO
- Great place to start your literature hunt.
- PsycINFO is on the library's webpage of database.
Content and Coverage of PsycINFO
"Journal articles, chapters, books, dissertations, and
reports on psychology and related fields"
"Why select this database? Includes international material selected from
periodicals written in over 25 languages since 1887
Includes current chapter and book coverage with worldwide English-language
material published from 1987-present
Adds over 55,000 references annually through monthly updates"
"Psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines: anthropology nursing business pharmacology education physiology law
psychiatry linguistics sociology medicine"
(Material quoted above is from OCLC FirstSearch search interface)
Searching PsycINFO: OVERVIEW
- If you are not familiar with the basics of online searching, see this Generic Searching Guide
- The goal of searching is to come up with a really good journal article, book, or other type of material, whether in print or available electronically.
- Note: Lehigh has journal articles in both print and electronic form (as well as books). An example of an electronic journal article is this.
- To do a search, go to the library homepage, click on databases, select PsycINFO, and then run a search (see examples below)
- Here is a portion of a PsycINFO record; it gives information about the article linked to above. Records like this are the target of your PsycINFO searching:
- This is not an article--it is a record with information about an article. (See below for information on how to obtain copies of papers.)
- Notice that PsycINFO records are broken down into "fields" such as title, author, abstract.
- PsycINFO gives you additional fields, such as "descriptors", which enable you to obtain more focused results, as we shall see when we run some examples below.
- Descriptors are subject headers that PsycINFO assigns to records.
NOTE: If you click on the SFX button, you can get to the full text of an item. More about SFX later.
FOCUSED SEARCHING
It is easy to throw in a few keywords and bring up search results which may or may not be focused. But with a little extra effort, you can come up with far more focused results.
SIX EXAMPLES OF THE MAGIC OF FOCUSED SEARCHING
These are done in the "advanced" mode. Overall point: try different angles until you find what you need.
The examples will likely differ from the focus
of your project, but you can readily adapt these techniques.
Example 1
Find journal articles in English about
lying on personality inventory tests.
- First, try a simple keyword search using the keywords "personality" and "inventories" and "lying". A keyword search ranges over these "fields" in PsycINFO records: descriptor, title, abstract, key phrase (identifier), and table of contents.
- Try "truncation". E.g., search "personalit*"
and "inventor*". What is truncation?
From help documentation:
"Truncation allows you to search for a term and its variations by entering a minimum of the first three letters of the term followed by an asterisk *. For example, securit* retrieves records that contain security , securities , securitization , etc.
Note: Truncation can only be used after the third character. Also, truncation is currently set to read a limit of 50 index entries; this limit was devised to achieve better performance by the FirstSearch system and will result in an error message if the user enters a truncation query that is too general."
- Look over the search results. Click to see the full records, which look generally like the one above.
- Most people stop at this point. But watch what happens if you go further.
- Say the article above is ballpark. Look at the "descriptors" for this article. Again, descriptors are subject headers assigned to PsycINFO records.
- Do a descriptor phrase search (using the drag down menu and selecting descriptor phrase) on two of the relevant descriptors: "personality measures" and "deception". Along the way, limit the search to English language (see "language phrase"), and to peer reviewed articles (see "document type phrase"), and then run the search. With respect to "document type phrase", also try the journal article options.[Fine point: you may discover that if the descriptor contains parentheses, you'll have trouble searching for the item if you select descriptor phrase from the drag-down menu. *Leave out the parentheses* when you do the search.]
- You will see new papers that do not appear in the original list. You know that these papers are "on topic" (and thus 'focused'), since they would not have been assigned the descriptors if they were not.
- Maybe one of those papers from this second search is better than papers generated by the first search.
- Keep going this way until you find the papers that interest you.
- You can email or print the search results.
- Then see below for information on how to obtain copies of papers.
- (Note: see example 2 for how to limit to papers having an empirical slant)
Find journal articles in English about
narcissistic personality disorder. Find articles that have an empirical slant.
- First, do a keyword search on the terms "narcissistic" and "personality" and "disorder". As we have seen, keyword searching is a great way to bring up some initial results that can lead to new ones.
- Maybe you will find what you want at this stage by scrolling through a few screens. The search set is big, so you may want a more focused search.
- Look at the descriptors in search results that look especially relevant. A descriptor you may come across is "narcisisstic personality disorder".
- Drag down "descriptor phrase" and search on "narcissistic personality disorder".
- Go back to the advanced search screen.
- Incorporate the content type for "empirical" into your search. To do
so, select "content type phrase". Then click on button
.
Type in "0". Click browse. Scroll through to see the options.
Click on "0800 empirical study" Now run the new search. (For information
about content types, see here)
- Go back to advanced search screen.
- Limit the search to English language, and to peer reviewed articles. (Also try journal article option.)
- Restrict by last two years.
- Run the search.
- You can email or print the search results.
- Then see below for information on how to obtain copies of papers.
Example 3
I want articles about a subject that have other particular approaches, just e.g., that provide literature reviews or have a bibliographic slant. How can I bring them up?
We've already seen how to find an article with an empirical
slant. Try exploring some of the other content types. In the advanced
search screen, select "content type phrase" from the drag-down menu.
Then click on the button 
Type in "0". Click browse. Scroll through to see the options for "content
type phrase". Click on the one that you want. In the advanced search interface,
add additional search interfaces or use the limit features, and then run
the search.
Example 4
Is there a more organized/systematic way to find "descriptors" to search?
- Click the button
off the advanced search screen. - This brings you to a place where you can search for headings in the PsycINFO thesaurus.
- For example, put in "clinical psychology" to see what comes up.
- Keep in mind the following:
"Index terms are controlled vocabulary terms used in database records to
make searching easier and more
successful. By standardizing the words or phrases used to represent concepts,
you don't need to try and figure
out all the ways different authors could refer to the same concept. Each
record in the PsycINFO database
contains controlled vocabulary terms from the Thesaurus of Psychological
Index Terms.
PsycINFO staff index records according to the source
document's level of specificity. [emphasis mine]
For example,an experimental population labeled "high school students" will
be indexed with the term "High School
Students", not the broader and less specific term "Students". Therefore,
any relevant narrower terms should be included
in the list of index terms in your search. Related terms may also closely
match a search topic, and should be
considered as well. You will find these narrower and related terms in the
Relationship section of the Thesaurus."
Example 5
I've found one really good article. Can I find documents later in time that cite it?
Information about how to do this, not only on PsycInfo but also ISI Web of Science (see below for info about this second resource), is available in the library research guide "Cited/Citing Resources": A Special Way to Build Bibliographies".
Example 6
Are there other indexing tools that I can use to focus searching?
Yes--to see the available tools, see this "Guide to the Fields
in Our Database Records", which links out to more information.
For persons interested in psychological tests, see "Tips for Searching
for Psychological Tests"
Search Tips:
- Do not use the limit to full text feature. You will not get everything that is available at Lehigh.
- Items with the "library and book" icon are in our library. However, don't assume that if an item does not have that icon, that we do not have it. Check ASA.
- When putting in search terms, you may want to use truncation and other special features, like proximity--see the help docs for FirstSearch
For more about PsycINFO:
If you want to learn more about PsycINFO or how to search it, see the following:
- About PsycINFO
- Information about PsycINFO
- Consult Interdisciplinary Applications of PsycINFO to get ideas about how to search a variety of topics in PsycINFO
- PsycINFO Journal Coverage List
- PsycINFO on OCLC search guides
- Guide to the Fields in our Database Records
- Tips for Searching Historical Records
- See also help documentation on OCLC FirstSearch
This is another database that may prove valuable.
Like PsycInfo, it can be reached off the library services webpage , under the databases listing.
Try a keyword search to find relevant records and get ideas how to further refine the search. Try using descriptors/thesaurus terms.
C. WEB OF SCIENCE
Social Sciences Citation Index coverage is available via Web of Science which also includes coverage of Science Citation Index and Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Coverage is 1993 to present.
Yes, "Web of Science" (hereafter, WOS) is a misnomer.
Here's a tutorial about WOS.
What does WOS do?
1. TOPIC SEARCHING. You can do a topic/subject search, as in the databases above. If you want, pre-select the portion of WOS that you want to search, e.g. just the social sciences section ("Social Sciences Citation Index"). The problem with doing that is that you might miss out on some neat interdisciplinary articles that cut across social sciences, sciences, and arts and humanities.
Click on"General Search". Here is a sample search that you can try out; type this into the search box for topic searching: help* and behav*, and click on the title search box.
Go back and do the same search, this time restricting to review articles in the box toward the bottom of the search screen.
Note that, in the search results that come up, you can see the SFX button. Also, when you bring up a record, look for the "times cited" and "cited references". Click on these gets you citing items, and items cited. This way you can build up a bibliography of related works.
2. CITED REFERENCE SEARCHING. We won't try this right
now, but once you find a paper you really like, you can click on "Cited
Ref Search" to find references later in time that cite it. See the help
docs for examples. Again, this way you can build up a bibliography of
related works. (See example 3 above for how PsycINFO lets you do the same
thing.)
OTHER DATABASES
PsycINFO and Social Science Citation Index are only two of the databases that Lehigh's libraries make available. See here for an alphabetical and subject breakdown of databases. Go to the upper left to drag down the menu broad subject areas, such as "Social Sciences". This lets you bring up all the social sciences related databases.
"Academic Index, Expanded [Infotrac]" is an example of another database that might be relevant. Try out the subject search, which breaks your subject down into subdivisions. Note that you can limit to articles with text, and to refereed publications
Also, see "PA Research II (Periodicals Abstracts)".
A few others possibly relevant:
ANNUAL REVIEWS
See what material is available in Annual Reviews. Drag down your subject area, for example, sociology.
Here's an example: put in 'voting' as a search. Date sort the results and look them over.
If you like what comes up when using Annual Reviews, look for "Search for citing articles in: ISI Web of Science" link (if present). Also, see the related articles feature as well as "Alert me when: New articles cite this article".
INFODOME
Check out the Infodome section for Psychology.
PRINT REFERENCE WORKS
Print reference resources are available in the reference area of the library. See ASA to find them. Reference works such as encyclopedias can help you get a quick overview of a field. (Note: we also have electronic reference materials; see the library database listing--e.g., xRefer Plus and Oxford Reference Online--and also check ASA.)
Here are just a few examples of print reference works:
- Encyclopedia of Human Behavior 150.3 E564
- Encyclopedia of Psychology 150.3 E5631
- Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science 150.3 E563 2001
- Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychoanalysis 616.89003 E56
E. OBTAINING COPIES OF PAPERS AND OTHER MATERIALS
We have used bibliographic databases to find references and abstracts for papers that look interesting.
How do you actually locate the paper(s)?
(1.) After doing your online search, see if there is an "SFX" link for the item. If we have electronic full text of a journal article, you can link to it from that link. To see what an SFX link looks like, see toward the top of the PsycINFO record copied above. For more information about SFX, click here.
[Note: if you have a citation and go here , you can link to full text if we have a journal article electronically.]
(2.) First, check ASA to see if Lehigh has the journal, either in paper or electronic format. Select "browse", type in the title of the journal, and then click "Journal Titles".
NOTE:
- A record will come up that shows you where the journal can be found in the library, if it is in print.
- Journals in electronic format have a link right out of the ASA record.
(3.) You may want to see if one of the regional libraries has the journal.
(4.) You may order the article through ILLIAD. Also, look for ILLIAD off the SFX menus that come up when you click on the SFX button out of a bibliographic database, such as PsycInfo or WOS.Don't wait til the last moment to order articles
through ILL.
An additional way to find papers: browse the tables of contents of recent issues or archived (bound) copies in the library, or look for relevant electronic journals browsable here by title or linked on ASA .
If you engage in plagiarism, it is like a ticking timebomb. There is a good chance you will be found out, with serious consequences.
Without intending to engage in plagiarism, you may unwittingly do so. To avoid it, familiarize yourself with what it is. If you learn how to do footnoting in the proper style, this can help you.
Here's a Lehigh University Libraries webpage that can help you get started: Ante/Anti Plagiarism.
NOTE: This webpage is not a substitute for whatever instructions your instructor gives about correct footnoting style and what constitutes plagiarism.
Let us know what you think about the "Ante/Anti Plagiarism" webpage--whether you found it useful or how it can be improved. Send an email to Sharon Siegler, the webpage's designer, and copy me (Brian Simboli) in.