PSY 117 - PsycINFO

Welcome to the Hamilton Library website!

The library provides you with many resources to help you with your academic research.

One such resource is PsycINFO.  You will use this resource quite a bit in PSY 117 and other psychology and social science classes.

This tutorial walks you through the basic steps of navigating to and locating peer-reviewed articles in PsycINFO.

Tips:

• Click the arrow(s) below to navigate through this tutorial.
• Click on an underlined word to learn more.
• Click on images to enlarge them.
• Directions or steps to take will be identified in Bold.

If at any time you have questions, please email jmahoney@franklincollege.edu.

Let's begin and take a look at PsycINFO together.
 

Getting to PsycINFO is easy.

Hover over the word Resources on the library website. It is found in the top menu of the library website.

A drop-down menu will appear when you hover over the word "Resources".  Click Online Resources from the drop-down menu.

Now, you'll see an alphabetical list of all the online resources available to you as a Franklin College student.

Scroll down the page to find "PsycINFO".

Click PsycINFO, 1887-present.

Type in your Franklin College username and password to sign in.  

Click Logon when finished. Logging in is necessary to make sure that only Franklin College students and employees use PsycINFO.

Approved by the American Psychological Association, PsycINFO contains peer reviewed journals with articles from 1894 to present.

PsycINFO also gives you the ability to find empirical information in the field of Psychology.

We'll start on the Advanced Search page.

Before entering your search terms, let's explore five recommended "Search Options". (Scroll if necessary.)

1. Linked Full Text - Check this box to ensure that your results only consist of resources you have full text access to at this time.

If you do not check this box, you will see ALL resources that are available through PsycINFO, either now or through interlibrary loan.

Click on the image to enlarge it if needed.

Scroll down the page slowly to find the next two recommended Search Options.

2. Publication Year - Most social scientists research within the last 10 years.  Manually enter your date range accordingly.

3. Peer Reviewed - Check this box, as your psychology instructors require you to find research from peer reviewed journals.

Scroll down the page a bit more to find the last two recommended Search Options.

4.  Methodology - In this box, click on Empirical study to find original research.

5.  Exclude Dissertations - Check this box to exclude dissertations.  They are not needed for your research.

Scroll back up to the top of the page to enter your search terms.

Before we add search terms, please answer two review questions.

Let's run a sample search.

Make sure that you've considered all five Search Options before you enter a search term.

Then, enter a term such as cyberbullying, in the top search box.

Click Search.

Notice on this page that your Search Results fill the right of the page, while the Search Options (Limiters) you chose fill the left of the page.  

You can double check your Search Options at any time, deleting them from this page or clicking Show More to choose more.

Let's pause for a quick review.

We will explore more in class.  
Thank you for completing this tutorial.

Please go to the next page to print and email your certificate of completion.  Bring your certificate to class, and email your certificate to jmahoney@franklincollege.edu. 

Certificate

Please enter your name and email address to retrieve a copy of your completed quiz.

You can enter multiple email addresses separated by commas. If you are doing this for a class, you may need to enter your instructor's email address also.