Some of the best strategies for finding relevant results in a databases:
Search for just a few key words or phrases related to your topic. Look for two or more of the following.
Population (e.g. college students, adolescents, etc.)
Problem (e.g. depression, confirmation bias, etc.)
Intervention (e.g. extrinsic reinforcement)
Outcome (e.g. higher levels of confidence--search for the word, confidence)
Context (e.g. college campus, social network sites, etc.)
Search in the abstracts for keywords.
Chances are, if a word or phrase is mentioned in the abstract, it is an important part of the whole article.
Before you click "Search," most databases allow you to select "Abstract."
Sort the list of results by relevance.
Look for one highly relevant, high quality article to begin with.
Look in the "References" section, and click on the "Cited By" link.
The "References" section will list very relevant sources on your topic. Search for the titles of these articles in LionSearch or Google Scholar.
Many databases and Google Scholar have "Cited By" links. This link shows you who cited this article. That's why starting with one really strong article will help you find many more sources very quickly.
The best database for psychology journal articles, including Community Psychology. Unlike most library databases, it enables you to search for studies by research methodology, participcants' age and gender, and other helpful categories.
PsycINFO provides access to international literature in psychology and related disciplines. Unrivaled in its depth of psychological coverage and respected worldwide for its high quality, the database is enriched with literature from an array of disciplines related to psychology such as psychiatry, education, business, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, law, linguistics, and social work. Nearly all records contain nonevaluative summaries, and all records from 1967 to the present are indexed using the Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms.
PsycARTICLES is a database of full-text articles from journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber.
PsycARTICLES is a database of full-text articles from journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber.
Contains articles related to educational psychology and school psychology.
ProQuest Education Journals provides access to over 785 journals, more than 615 in full text, including all aspects of education, with coverage since 1991-.
Contains articles related to educational psychology and school psychology.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) is the major database for education literature, sponsored by the U.S. Department. of Education. The same database content is available on many platforms.
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Once you set your institutional preferences, links to full-text, if available at Penn State, should appear.