Psychology Research Methods: Search Strategies

Used to typing in a phrase in Google and getting results?  You could do this in a library database, but you'll be sifting through unnecessary and irrelevant results if you do.  Having a strategy simply helps you make the most of your research the first time around.

What will having a search strategy do for you?

• Make your research more efficient & effective.
• Save time--you won't have to sift through thousands of results to find one good article!
• Get you better results, and therefore a better grade.

What are limits and why use them?

Limits are helpful in focusing your search.  Once you've done your initial search you can use some limits to help you narrow your results to a more manageable amount of information.

• Date:  limit results to a specific time frame
• Peer review:  limit to only peer-reviewed articles
• Full text:  find only the articles available in full text  **TIP:  you can request an article that isn't available through Interlibrary Loan
• Publication type:  limit results to meta analysis, reviews, systematic reviews, research articles, and evidence based practice.

Additional search limits are available when you limit your search to APA PsycINFO and APA PsycARTICLES.  Use the Choose Databases link at the top of the Psychology database to deselect all the databases except these two psychology databases.

Limit options available when only searching these two databases include:

 1.  Population

 2.  Age Groups

 3. Methodology

• Clinical Case Study
• Empirical Study
• Field Study
• Literature Review
• Interview

 4.  Document Type

After you brainstorm keywords, you need to know how to use them to search for resources.