Psychology 110

Databases provide access to articles from credible, well-known newspapers, magazines and journals. The Learning Commons pays a subscription fee for several general and subject-specific databases for students and faculty to use. Some databases contain scholarly content, like academic journals on a specific subject, and others contain articles from popular magazines such as Newsweek or Forbes. Databases may contain a mixture of content from both scholarly and popular sources.

To view a list of all the other databases you have access to through the Learning Commons A-Z Database list. 

Because the Learning Commons pays to provide access to databases, you must confirm that you are a student in order to use them. Enter your KCTCS ID and Password (same one you use for Blackboard) when prompted.

Keywords are words that can appear anywhere in an article including the title or the article text. You'll use keywords to search all of the Learning Commons databases.   

Before you begin searching, try to think of the keywords and related terms that best describe and relate to your topic. For example, if you were researching depression in new moms, you might come up with this list:

Avoid natural language: Asking a database "Why are new moms depressed?" won't get you very good results. Identify a few keywords and search using only those words: depression postpartum mothers. When it comes to searching academic databases, use scientific language. For instance, search mothers instead of moms. Another example might be looking for children instead of kids.

• Make sure terms are spelled correctly and that you use other terms that might also apply to, or describe your topic.  For example if you want to find articles about teenagers, you should also use the terms adolescents and young adults.
• If you aren't sure about what keywords to use, consider reading an encyclopedia article on your topic to get ideas for other keywords.
• Ask the library staff or your instructor for suggestions on keywords to use. 

Here's an example of a common but incorrect searching style in PsycINFO:

This searcher needs to refocus on scientific language and get rid of the extra words.

This search is better, because it focuses on scientific language. But it still will yield few results because PsycINFO will interpret this search as a phrase, so it will look for all of these words right next to each other. Some authors may use this exact phrase so you may get 1 or 2 results.

In this search, the main concepts (keywords) are separated by the word AND. That's a Boolean Operator. It is telling PsycINFO that you want to find all three of these main concepts anywhere in the record for the article, but that the words don't have to be altogether in order. This search will get you the best results.

Adapted from the Paul V. Galvin Library's Psychology Research Guide at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

EBSCOhost is a collection of 24 databases, most with full text, covering a comprehensive range of subjects- business, medicine, pharmacology, nursing, psychology, education, sociology, and more. Suggested databases to search for information related to psychology:

• PsycINFO
• Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
• Sociological Collection
• Academic Search Premier
• ERIC (Education Resource Information Center)

NOTE: If working off-campus, enter your KCTCS ID and Password (same one you use for Blackboard) when prompted.

Google Scholar searches specifically for scholarly materials such as journal articles, research reports, dissertations and theses, preprints, technical reports, patents, manuscripts in preparation, working papers and many other document types.

When you do a search in Google Scholar, you get a list of citations. You'll get links to the full text if it's from an open access journal, or if the researcher posted the article on her/his website.

To get access to the full text of an article you find in Google Scholar, try searching for the title or authors in the library's databases.