Research Guides: PSYC 171: History of Psychology: Search Strategies

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Search Strategies

Searching databases for journal articles is a bit more challenging than using tools such as Google. The good news is that you have a lot more control over how you design the search. This also means you should get better, more targeted results.

Before you start your research, try focusing your topic by writing a one sentence research question.
For example: How have the underlying theories and philosophy of behaviorism changed over time?

Identify the main ideas in your research question.
- behaviorism
- history
- theories or philosophy

Boil the statement down to keywords, or the most important elements of your issue.
EX: behaviorism, history, theories, philosophies
Use an asterisk to find variations of a word.
EX: philosoph* will find philosophy, philosophies, philosophical

Then, separate the keywords with the "and" and "or" connectors
EX: behaviorism and history and (theor* or philosoph*)

The above search strategy in the PsycINFO database will look like this. Note that I changed "Select a Field" to "SU Subjects" so only the index terms for this article are searched.