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Psychosocial Literature: Basic Research/Search Strategies

What resource should you check first when you begin to search for psychosocial information? Here are some tips on how to start.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO FIND?

WHERE TO FIND IT? RESOURCE INFORMATION SEARCHING TIPS

Full-text from a journal, e.g., Psychological Assessment

Library E-Resources for online versions; and also MEDCat for print

Ehrman Medical Library Electronic Resources at: http://library.med.nyu.edu/eresources/index.html; MEDCat (online catalog) at http://medcat.med.nyu.edu

Type title in Resource Title Box or click on 1st letter of title in list Select Journal Title search; DO NOT search for article titles

A quality of life instrument, e.g., the Caregiver Quality of Life Index or the Caregiver Quality of Life Instrument

HAPI PsycINFO, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL

Health & Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI) is the database of choice for finding testing instruments PsycINFO, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CINAHL will provide info about the test, not the test itself

Check Primary Source box in HAPI for the original testing instrument Search variations of the name of the test, including acronyms, e.g. CQLI, WHOQOL

1968 article from a psychoanalytic journal, e.g., Psychoanalytic Quarterly

PEP – Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing Archive

Electronic full-text of 11 major psychoanalytic journals from 1920 – 2000, and full-text of 23 classic psychoanalytic books

Double check MEDCat catalog for print holdings; print available in Library only from 1985 – present; use online Interlibrary Loan form to request earlier materials

Current literature on violence and cocaine

PsycINFO, EMBASE, MEDLINE

PsycINFO searches books (after 1987) and journal literature back to 18782 with a focus on psychological/psychodynamic aspects of subject. MEDLINE and EMABASE focus more on the clinical, and especially for EMBASE, the drug therapy aspects

Ovid allows for multi-database searches, but with resulting loss of each database’s unique subject headings such as MeSH

A comprehensive and descriptive review of the Derogatis Stress Inventory (DSI)

MMY – Mental Measurements Yearbook PsycINFO, HAPI, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL

MMY provides full reviews, often by two psychology professionals, of standard tests covering educational skills, personality, vocational aptitude, psychology, and related areas These databases will provide citations, often with abstracts, to the published literature about a test

MMY is available electronically and also in print for volumes from vol 9, 1985 - present only Use the Remove Duplicates command if you search more than one database at the same time