PSYC 1101 Introduction to Psychology: Database Searching

These are some current items in the news relating to Psychology.

I recommend starting out with an article in popular media that looks interesting to you. You can find a popular media article by looking up a topic of interest using the database Academic Search Complete, and limit to Magazines. Or, browse the web or magazines for news items. Many news sources have reports on research--psychology is often a part of research into business management or marketing, education, health topics, etc.

If you commute, National Public Radio broadcasts several programs with psychology topics that are relevant to everyday life, and there are other sources online.

For this assignment I needed to choose a topic. It's easy to start with the popular media article: an article that I heard on the radio that I thought was interesting-

Then I did an Advanced Search the PsycINFO databases to find some articles about the wisdom of crowds. To come up with keywords, I got clues from the popular media article-- the name of the scientist interviewed, and the topic, forecasting. I was able to both track down the work written by the scientist, Tetlock, and also other work about the subject. I also limited my search to peer reviewed articles.

There were 15 other articles that were mostly relevant. If there hadn't been, I could have searched combinations other search terms, like Judgment, Prediction or Decision Theory.

Advanced Search for best results!  Like this:

Searching: Academic Search Complete

Box 1  You may want to begin by searching a broad topic.

Then browse results to find one or more relevant articles that interest you. What terms does the database use to describe these articles in their subjects or abstracts? What are related words? You may want to modify your search as you find better or different terms.

AND Box 2   Focus your search using a second box with additional keywords. You may string similar words together in the box using OR between the words. Also, refine using limiters in the left-side menu – date, scholarly/peer-reviewed journals, subject and others.

AND Box 3  You may want to narrow further. One way to search multiple terms at  once is by using the *. Psychol* will find articles including words that begin with psychol, like psychology and psychological, etc.

In your list of database search results, some citations will not include the full text of the article.

When that happens, in most Dalton State databases you will see a tool called  to help you access the full text of articles.

The  button will link you to the articles if they are available in other DSC library databases.

If that doesn't help, look to see if there is an icon indicating. This is an icon meaning the article can be found free, on the web.