Nothing saves time and energy like really effective database searching. The key is to find the right words. PsycInfo (located on the Access Online Databases page in CSA) has amazing indexing which allows you to search for Descriptors (assigned subject terms) in a number of ways.
-"Find a good article then find more like it" - The easiest approach is to do a keyword search on your topic in PsycInfo. Once the results list comes up, find the perfect article. Click on the title to look at the full record. Scroll down to the Descriptors section. Checkmark all the Descriptors that are meaningful to your topic, then click on Go. This will automatically combine those descriptors, generating a new search that closely matches your topic.
- Thesaurus - With some topics, there is just so much out there. The good news is that PsycInfo has a thesaurus built in that allows you to understand what Descriptor terms are used, what they mean, and the relationships between terms. To use the PsycInfo Thesaurus once you are in CSA, click on Search Tools and then click on Thesaurus. After typing in your term to the thesaurus, you can checkmark terms and click Search at left to generate a new search based on the perfect term(s).
There is much more to learn about using thesauri in database searching, please contact the librarians at refdesk@itp.edu if you have further questions.
