This course is an introductory course which surveys the field of psychology, including the study of behavior, cognitive processes, the concepts of memory, perception and sensation, consciousness, personality development, psychological disorders, psychotherapy, and social behavior.
General Databases (Interdisciplinary)
Content: Peer reviewed journals, full-text articles, magazines, newspapers, podcasts, and video files from multiple subjects.
Purpose: Students can view a massive amount of peer reviewed research from multiple subjects.
Special Features: Includes a visualization tool and browse-by-topic feature that aids in brainstorming topics, a Lexile feature that filters texts by difficulty, the ability to highlight and add notes to text, and a read-aloud feature; Save content to Google Drive.
Content: A reference database useful for accessing scholarly definitions, background and contextual information. Subjects covered include art, biography, business, economics, education, history, literature, music, psychology, religion, and science and technology.
Purpose: An excellent starting point for brainstorming a research topic and building out your initial search terms list.
Special Features: Mindmap; related articles; image search
Content: Collection of more than 30 Proquest subject-specific databases covering Business, Health and Medical, Social Sciences, Education, Science and Technology, and Humanities.
Purpose: Students can view a massive amount of peer-reviewed research across multiple disciplines.
Special Features: Includes a Thesaurus feature that assists in using the database’s controlled vocabulary, as well as read-aloud feature.
Psychology
Content: APA database that offers full-text for journals published by APA, the Canadian Psychological Association, Hogrefe Publishing Group and APA's Educational Publishing Foundation.
Purpose: Important database for psychology, counseling, and education students.
Special Features: The database is updated bi-weekly all content is available in PDF and HTML formats; a Methodology search filter to narrow searches to a specific research methods.
Content: Peer reviewed journals, full-text articles, and other research materials. Cross-referenced to sources in PsycINFO.
Purpose: Provides access scholarship from agricultural researchers on a variety of psychology topics.
Special Features: Includes a visualization tool and browse-by-topic feature that aids in brainstorming topics, a Lexile feature that filters texts by difficulty, the ability to highlight and add notes to text, and a read-aloud feature; Save content to Google Drive.
Content: Provides hundreds of full-text psychology journals. It offers particularly strong coverage in child and adolescent psychology and counseling.
Purpose: Full-text database for psychologists, counselors, researchers, and students.
Special Features: Includes many journals indexed in APA PsycInfo.
Content: Includes citations to millions of biomedical journal articles, as well as some books, book chapters, and reports.
Purpose: An essential database for biomedical and health topics
Special Features: Includes MeSH search functionality
The BASIC search is the default when accessing the ProQuest database. Enter your search terms or keywords in the search box. You can use different Search Strategies, like Boolean operators and double quotations.
This search box also allows for limitations on your results. Check the "Full Text" box to limit the results to articles that are available in full-text on the database. Check the "Peer Reviewed" box to limit the results to scholarly journals. To learn more about the difference between magazines and peer reviewed articles, see the Evaluating Articles section of the Library Tutorial.
Advanced Search
Another way of searching is to use the Advanced search option. This option allows for multiple search terms or keywords to be entered, without having to write the Boolean operators. It also has more options for limiting your search.
Once in the landing page of the database, click on Advanced up at the top.
1. Enter your first keyword
2. Choose where to search from the drop-down menu (for this example: Subjects All)
3. Choose your Boolean operator (for this example: AND)
4. Enter your second keyword (for this example: depression)
5. Choose where to search from the drop-down menu (for this example: Subjects All)
6. Set your limits (for this example: full-text)
7. Click Search
A list of citations of articles appears that match the specific search criteria that you entered. Results will be in chronological order with the most recently published article first. For this search the database returned 126 articles that contain the subjects African American AND depression and that are available in full-text.
To read a particular article in its entirety, click on the title (blue underlined link). Most articles will begin with an abstract. Read the abstract first for an initial indication of the content of the article and its usefulness for your project.
This is the article view. In this screen you can read the abstract and the full-text of the article. It also provides options for e-mailing, printing or saving the article. Bibliographic information can also be obtained from this screen.
For this example, indicated by the numbers:
1. Article title:Ethnic and Gender Disparities in Needed Adolescent Mental Health Care
2. Authors: John F. Thomas, Jeff R. Temple, Noe Perez and Richard Rupp
3. Publication name: Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved
4. Volume and issue number: volume 22, issue 1
5. Date of publication: February 2011
6. Pages: 101-110
Keep in mind that the bibliographic information provided here is not following any citation style. Refer to the style's rules and guidelines for the correct citation format.
Social Sciences Department
The Social Sciences Department prepares students for a wide range of careers. With a focus on global studies, local studies, and psychology, the department prepares students to be critical thinkers.
Dr. Korey Brown
Department Chair
Address: Marlboro Hall (MH), Room 2054
Phone: (301) 546 - 0526
Email:brownkb@pgcc.edu
Website: Social Sciences Department
