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CED 501 / CPY 702: Research and Evaluation in Counseling

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AND

If you are getting too many choices and want to narrow your results use AND. In doing this, you ensure that all terms must be present in the results list. For example: hormones AND female AND age AND memory

OR

Use OR to broaden your search. For example: "attachment behavior" OR "attachment disorder" will provide a list of results with either term.

NOT

Use NOT to narrow your results but beware! NOT eliminates all results containing a specific word, so be very careful using the NOT Boolean operator because you might unintentionally exclude records.

Example: (testimony OR witness+) NOT expert. 

Quotations

Use quotations " " to search for the exact phrase. For example: "stress scale" will not retrieve "perceived stress scale," "scaled of perceived stress," or any other variation. It will retrieve only "stress scale."

Tip* When using the ProQuest database platform that hosts both PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES you can also use curly brackets { } and the search will include spelling (humor v humour) and grammatical variants (tall will retrieve tallest) of the exact term. Example: compare "stress scale" with "{stress scale}" 

 

Nesting | Parentheses ( ) 

You can enclose search terms in parentheses to specify the order in which they are interpreted. Information within parentheses is read first, then information outside parentheses is read next. For example: 

memory AND (optimis* OR pessimis* AND personality)

The computer first searches for everything that has either optimis* OR  pessimis* AND personality. Then, from that pool of results, it will limit it to only those results that also include memory.

Truncation* 

Truncation means "to shorten" by removing the end of the word. The “*” replaces a word ending and will allow you to find all forms of a word root. For example: therap* will locate records with: therapy, therapies, therapist, therapists, therapeutic, therapeutically, etc.

In ProQuest, the "*" represents up to five characters within or at the end of a word. 

The question mark symbol (?) is the Wildcard character, used to replace any single character, either inside or at the end of the word.  One single ? will retrieve only one more character.

For example, searching gr?y would retrieve “grey” and “gray.”

**Note** Some databases use the # symbol for Wildcard searching. In this example, I am sharing what works for ProQuest (the vendor) that provides access to PsycINFO (the database).

Plural +

The "+" symbol instructs the database to search for words' plural and singular forms. For example, witness and witnesses

Boolean +

PRE/X: finds terms with X number of words between them, in the order they are entered in the search. 

NEAR/X: finds terms with X number of words between them, regardless of the order in which they occur. 

        Specifying NEAR/1 can be helpful for finding results that include specific phrases because the two terms are next to – or “one word away” from — each other.

        Increasing the proximity search limit to NEAR/2 will return records that have the search terms appearing within two words of each other (i.e., next to each other or separated by a single word between them). For example, searching for child* NEAR/2 trauma* {in Abstract field} AND experience {in Any Field} will retrieve records with useful variations due to both the word order and the truncation operator.

Matching search results for this proximity search would include (but aren’t limited to)

Experience of childhood trauma

Traumatic childhood experiences

Experience of children with traumatic [brain injuries]

Trauma on child [emotional health]

Trauma-exposed children

[Psychological] trauma for children

Children experience traumatic [stress]

Children after trauma

Children’s traumatic experiences

How To: Find the Full Text of Articles

The  link or other full-text links within our databases should take you to the article if we have it. But if it doesn't, checking further's a good idea. There's a good chance that we might still have the article you need. There are several ways that you can do this:

Search the title of the article in Library One Search. If you put the article's title in quotation marks in the search box, it will be a little more specific, but that's not always necessary. Usually, just a simple cut and paste will work. Note that this will usually only find the article if ASU has it, so it's sometimes more limiting than a Google Scholar search. If you're not finding what you want, try both options.

Search the title of the article in Google Scholar—same procedure as above. Use the  link within Google Scholar to take you to the article. If you're not finding what you want, try Google Scholar and Library One Search.

If those methods don't work, you can make a final check using our Journal Title Lookup feature to lead you to the volumes of that particular journal that we can access online or in print.

These are also the methods to find an article if you have gotten a reference from another source, such as a bibliography, and already know the citation information (journal name, volume number, date, etc.).

How To: Find DOI's

How to: locate articles at ASU using DOI

Almost all journal articles now have DOIs, but that wasn't always the case. It is common practice for the DOI to be clearly printed on the first page of the journal article. But what if it's not? The fact that a DOI does not appear in the article itself does not necessarily mean it doesn't have one. It may be that the publisher has gone back and retroactively assigned DOIs to all of their older issues. What is the best way to start your search? The answer really is "whatever works best for you!" But here are the best possibilities for you to check:

  • Check the PDF of the article itself and see if the DOI appears on the article's front page.
  • Go to www.crossref.org. Put the title of the article in the "search metadata" box. The DOI will show on the results page. (This is also demonstrated in the video.)
  • Look up the article in PsycInfo. Once you find the record, click "abstract/details." Scroll down, and you'll see the DOI field toward the bottom of the record. (This is shown in the video.)
  • Look at the publisher's website for that journal and look for the article or abstract. If they have retroactively assigned a DOI, it should be included on the page for that particular article.

What if I can't find it? 

There are still some journals that do not assign DOIs. For example, there is a highly cited journal called "Alcohol Research: Current Reviews" that does not use them. And there are also publishers that have not gone back and retroactively assigned DOIs to their older issues. If you are unsure whether or not you may have missed something, remember that you can always use our Ask a Librarian chat service or contact your subject librarian.

How To: Request Articles Not Available @ ASU

If you cannot locate the full-text article, click the  button to see if ASU Library owns the article in another database.

if not online at ASU Library...

Choose the InterLibrary Loan (ILLIAD Service) option to order your article. Click on "Expand My Results."  It will be delivered to you through your Illiad account online.

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