Subjects: criminal justice, gender studies, latino studies, political science, psychology, social work, sociology
Content: journals, magazines, books, conference proceedings
Publication dates: 1908 – present
APA PsycArticles is a full-text database offering access to journals published by the American Psychological Association and others. Subjects include behavioral science and related fields ranging from education, nursing, and business, with advanced search options featuring the ability to filter by methodology, population and age group.
PsycINFO is an index only database produced by the American Psychological Association and provides comprehensive abstracts of international psychological literature from the 1800s to the present. Documents indexed include journals, articles, books, dissertations, and more, with advanced search options featuring the ability to filter by methodology, population and age group.
Subjects: social work
Content: index of journals
Publication dates: 1977 – present
Counseling and Therapy in Video contains more than 2,400 hours of footage from actual therapy sessions, training videos, and reenactments conducted by counseling professionals. It provides students a firsthand look at the realities of working with clients and the challenges associated with putting theoretical concepts into practice.
Identify keywords for your topic and brainstorm narrower, broader, and related terms.
Example: Factors that affect academic performance in first-generation college students.
| Academic Performance | College | First-Generation Students |
| Student Success | Higher Education | Children of Immigrants |
| Student Achievement | University | Minority Students |
| Learning Outcomes | Community College | Nontraditional Students |
Boolean Operators AND, OR, and NOT allow you to broaden or narrow your results in the library catalog and databases. You can easily use these to clarify what you need by choosing the advanced search option.
Add more keywords.
Adding additional keywords to your search can help to further narrow your topic.
Example: college AND first-generation students AND academic performance
Use a filter
Look on the left side for ways you can filter your materials. Here are a few to consider, depending on your needs.
Try different search terms.
What other words could you use to describe this concept? Brainstorm related terms, synonyms, and slightly different forms of your word or phrase. Also brainstorm broader categories or concepts it belongs to, as well as narrower elements or examples. (See the keywords section above for examples.)
It may also be useful to consider the official, academic, or formal way to write that term. This is more likely to be used in academic writing.
Use fewer search terms.
Sometimes less is more! The more words, phrases, or subjects you ask the database to find, the fewer sources will meet the criteria.
Use OR.
Broaden your search by using the boolean operator OR to link your terms.
Example: (college OR higher education OR university) AND first-generation students AND (academic performance OR student success)
