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ProgressLab Resources

Useful resources for Prof. Sara McClelland's Psychological Research on Gender, Research Methods, Sex & Sexuality Lab (ProgressLab).

About PsycINFO

PsycINFO - Finding Peer-Reviewed Empirical Study articles

PsycINFO - Why Use the Thesaurus?

Selecting and entering your search terms

Tips for selecting search terms:

  • Try several synonyms, connected with OR, to find the maximum number of articles on your topic.  Each concept gets its own line.  Use quotes around phrases.

  • Find an article you like, and note its subject headings or descriptors.  You can run a new search using these terms or phrases for more robust results.
  • If you have a term with several possible endings, use an asterisk to stand for the different endings. (Example: child* = child, children, childhood, etc.)
  • If you are getting too many results, try searching for your terms in the Title, TI=,  Abstract, AB=, or Descriptors, DE= fields instead of the default.

Focusing your search using date, language, format, etc.

PsycINFO allows you to place limits before you search, and "filters" after you have your results.  The most useful ones include:

  • Language: select a language from the dropdown, or simply check the box for English.
  • Age group: specify the age group that you need to have included in the study.  The articles you get might include other age groups as well, but this will help you filter out articles that don't deal with your population of interest.

  • Methodology: limit to Empirical Study to only get that type of article. Or, limit to Literature Review if that's what you want.  Very helpful!

  • You can also limit by year of publication, and you can view a list of journals or subject terms in the results set.