Step 5

Switch to a Subject Specific Category

You decide to try a more specialized index to continue your research. You highlight the Social Sciences tab and select the Psychology subcategory.

You see the 'Try these first!' database 'PsycINFO.'

When you click on PsychINFO's information icon, you get the following information:

PsycINFO contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations, in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines. Through EBSCOhost linking functionality, some articles are available in full text. Journal coverage includes international material selected from more than 1,700 periodicals from nearly 50 countries. The "historic" portion of the database comes from three sources: Psychological Abstracts (1927-1966), Psychological Bulletin (1921-1926), and all journals published by the American Psychological Association plus the American Journal of Psychology from the first issue of volume 1, number 1 in November 1887.

What interests you is the fact that the database is produced by the American Psychological Association and has abstracts (summaries) of journal articles, books, dissertations, and other information. Because you have found it through a subject specific category you know it will contain mostly scholarly publications and some articles are available full text.

The basic search screen

Some databases won't search a phrase unless the words that make up the phrase are enclosed by quotation marks. Databases that don't require quotation marks ignore them if they're typed in a search field. So, it isn't a bad strategy to start with quotation marks around phrases or, try them if you get fewer results than you expected.

Your results when you search for bipolar disorders

TEXT TRANSLATION:
>GALILEO>Social Sciences>Psychology>PsychINFO
Search: bipolar disorders
Retrieves: 589 citations

That's too many results. What if you refine your search with Boolean connectors again...?