Immigration Adjustment:

Research Strategies

PSYC 137

Christina Bush, Psychology Librarian

Agenda

• Introduction to Librarian 
• Survey Review
• On Interdisciplinary Research 
• Databases 
  • Subject Databases
    • Psychology/PsycINFO
      • Thesaurus
    • Sociological Abstracts
    • ProQuest Political Science Database
  • News sources/Nexis Uni
• Active Searching
• Final Questions

Who I am

• Christina Bush (she/her/hers)
  • Research + Instruction Librarian, Liaison to Black Studies, Educational Studies, Psychology 
  • email me: cbush1@swarthmore.edu
  • Make an appointment with me here

hOW DO YOU TYPICALLY APPROACH Searching for SCHOLARLY RESEARCH?

PSYC 137 Research GUIDE

interdisciplinary rESEARCH

INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

"a manner of dealing with psychological, medical, or other scientific questions in which individuals from different disciplines or professions collaborate to obtain a more thorough, detailed understanding of the nature of the questions and consequently develop more comprehensive answers. For example, an interdisciplinary approach to the treatment or rehabilitation of an individual who is ill, disabled, or experiencing distress or pain uses the talents and experiences of therapists from a number of appropriate medical and psychological specialties. Also called multidisciplinary approach."

-APA Gloassry

INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH 

to searching

• choosing WHERE to search 
• choosing WHAT to search 

databases

SUbject DATABASES

• PsychINFO
• Sociological Abstracts 
• Proquest Political Science Database

SURVEY RESULTS

PsychINFO

APA THESAURUS

Subtitle

keywords

A significant word or phrase in the title, subject headings (descriptors), contents note, abstract, or text of a record in an online catalog or bibliographic database that can be used as a search term in a free-text search to retrieve  records containing it also referred to as natural language

Controlled Vocabulary

predefined, authorized terms that have been indexed by the designer of the vocabulary -- typically LOC or a database

Let's search iN  PsycINFO

• ADVANCED SEARCH

• Thesarus 

Nexis Uni 

A nOTE ON "eXPLODE"

Remember, the thesaurus is not just an alphabetic list of terms. Instead, the terms are organized hierarchically with major subject areas, progressively branching off into more specific terms.

When you "explode" a term in a database that uses a thesaurus, you direct the system to search on a given term PLUS all the more specific terms that are nested beneath the original term.

Search Activity

• Using your own topic (or idea for a topic)
• Diagram keywords and synonyms
• Look in the PsycINFO thesaurus for terms and note what they are
• Use your terms to search in PsycINFO

I'll ask a few of you to report what you found

Evaluate What You Found​

• Evaluate the results
  • Do the result seem relevant?
  • Take a closer look by actually clicking in them
  • Did you notice anything interesting in terms of the outlined  "major subjects"
  • Did you notice/use any of the additional features like filtering, major subjects, citation generators?
  • Were you able to access the text (i.e. full text pdf)
  • Anything else of note?

Keeping Track and Getting Help

Questions?

Christina Bush

cbush1@swarthmore.edu