Education

Learn how to revise searches for better results and how to use advanced features in ERIC and PsycINFO. A typical student completes the full series of brief videos and exercises in 30 to 60 minutes.

Use the ERIC database (link opens in new tab) to complete the following exercise:

1. Try a search for your topic. If you don’t currently have a topic, try finding articles on the role of non-cognitive factors in college readiness. What is the first search you tried?
2. Now look through the results and make a short list of useful words you might use in future searches. If you find any words in the list of subject words, place a star (*) next to those.
3. Leave the ERIC database open in the 2nd tab to use for the exercise after the next video.

Note: In this video we refer to the Preview link, this link is now labelled Show Abstract in the database.

Use the ERIC database to complete the following exercise:

1. Try your search again using some of the search words that you wrote down in the first practice exercise. If a word was listed as a Subject word, try asking ERIC to find it only in the list of subjects. What is the search you tried now?
2. Look through the results and find one article that looks particularly “on target” for your topic. Go to the abstract page, then select “cite to get an APA citation for that article. 
3. Leave the ERIC database tab open to that article record and watch the 3rd (last video) below.

The checkbox for Reports Research that is described in the following video is currently not working. If you use that checkbox, you may get zero results.

1. Go to the abstract page for the “on target” article you submitted for the last exercise. Try using the Search with Indexing Terms box on the right to execute a search that uses only official Subject terms.

   Remember that these words will be linked with AND – so the more boxes you check, the smaller your list of results. Check too many and your result could be just the article you started with! Most of the time you will check only 1-3 boxes for this type of search. If you want to use subjects that work as synonyms or alternatives, it may be better to use the advanced form so you can put these on the same line with OR.

   Which terms did you choose to combine in your search? How many articles did you find? Did some of them look useful?

2. Try another search in either ERIC or PsycINFO. What search did you try? Did you use any of the special checkboxes?