Counseling Psychology Librarian
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Psychology Databases
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new windowThis database provides access to psychology journals, books, and dissertations. It is THE source for starting any psychology research project. Coverage is from 1887 to the present.
- APA PsycArticles This link opens in a new windowThis database provides access to journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and two other publishers. Most journals are covered from volume one to the present.
- APA PsycBooks This link opens in a new windowThis database provides access to book chapters published by the American Psychological Association (APA). It includes both important historical texts and current titles.
Search Tips for PsycINFO
Searching library databases for journal articles can be challenging, and each database offers different search filters and functionality. The good news is that these filters and tools offer you more control in designing a specific search, meaning you can find better, more targeted results! For in-depth help building a search, see the Library Search Tips tab on this guide.
- Break your topic into main ideas, and turn those ideas into keywords.
A PsycINFO search for the question Does exercise help teenage smokers change their behaviors? could look like this.
- Use an asterisk at the end of a word to retrieve various endings, and use quotation marks to search for phrases.
For example, adolescen* will retrieve adolescent and adolescence. Putting quotation marks around "anxious attachment" will keep those words together, rather than retrieving results where those words appear separately.
- Use the word OR to separate synonyms.
Learn more about AND, OR, NOT and building searches using Boolean Logic on the Library Search Tips tab.
- Use specialized filters to go beyond keyword searching.
PsycINFO has powerful filters that can take the guesswork out of some of your keywords.- Age group filter allows you to easily focus your results on hard-to-define age groups, such as "middle age" or "young adult."
- Methodology filter allows you to limit your results broadly to empirical research or to studies using a specific method or research design (such as interviews or a longitudinal study). You can also select the literature review method to help you find a review article summarizing research on your topic.
- Use the Thesaurus to find subject terms if you're not sure what keywords to use.
To learn more about the thesaurus and searching with subject terms, check out the Library Search Tips tab on this guide.
- Use InterLibrary Loan to request an article we don't have online.
If the full-text of an article is not available in the database, click on the "Find It @ SCU" link to see if it's available elsewhere. If not, you can request the article via Interlibrary Loan. This is a free service and you will usually get a PDF of the article in 1-2 business days. Check out our InterLibrary Loan FAQ for more info.
Additional Databases
These databases are other helpful places to search for scholarly articles related to topics in counseling psychology.
Health Sciences
- PubMed This link opens in a new windowThis database includes MEDLINE and indexes and abstracts articles, books, and multimedias on topics such as microbiology, health care, nutrition, pharmacology, and environmental health from 1966 to present.
- Biological Abstracts This link opens in a new windowThis database provides summaries for articles related to life sciences such as biology, clinical studies, biochemistry, pharmacology and zoology. Coverage from 1980 to present.
- Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition This link opens in a new windowThis database provides abstracts and journals related to general health, nutrition and professional health care for academia from 1975 to present.
Sociology
- Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new windowThis database provides access to journals, books, conference papers, and dissertations on the latest research in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences from 1963 to present.
- Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new windowThis database covers the journal literature of the social sciences from 1983 to present.
- Social Sciences Citation Index This link opens in a new windowThis database covers the journal literature of the social sciences from 1994 to present.
Race, Ethnicity, Gender, & Sexuality
- Exploring Race in Society This link opens in a new windowThis database provides full-text articles, primary source documents, speeches, essays, photographs, graphs and charts along with Government agency reports. Including journal content covering issues related to race, including those of Indigenous communities.
- GenderWatch This link opens in a new windowThis database provides full-text articles on gender and women's studies, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) by authoritative perspectives from 1970 to present.
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender This link opens in a new windowThis database provides primary resources from the 16th to 20th centuries on the history and study of sex, sexuality, and gender studies research along with LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) history and activism, psychology, and cultural studies. The library subscribes to Module 1: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940, Part 1: primary sources on social, political, health and legal issues impacting LGBTQ globally, and Module 3: Sex and Sexuality examining sexual norms and gender roles over time.
- Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowThis database contains two collections: 1) A current collection (1990-present) of full- text newspapers, magazines, and journals from ethnic and minority presses. 2) A History collection (1959-1989) of full-text newspapers, magazines and journals, focusing on African American, Hispanic American, and Native American presses.