PSY 322: How to find and identify peer-reviewed journal articles: Comparing searches

This example uses all four of the psychology modules available from EBSCOhost's All Reference Databases collection (psycArticles, psycExtra, psycINFO, and Psychology & Behavioral Sciences) along with the science module (Science Reference Center) and the sociology module (socINDEX).

The search used the Advanced search template, had "dementia" as a subject heading, limited results to full text from scholarly/peer-reviewed sources, and specified empirical research (a psycINFO limiter) as the type of article sought. Here are the first six results from the more than 11,000 results from that search.

Menchola, M. D. (2015). Addressing Alzheimer's: A pragmatic approach. Journal Of Family Practice, 64(1), 10-18.

Penders, Y. L. (2015). Awareness of dementia by family carers of nursing home residents dying with dementia: A post-death study. Palliative Medicine, 29(1), 38-47.

LOVE, R. A., & WALKER, T. B. (2015). Divorce on behalf of an incompetent person by a guardian. American Journal Of Family Law, 28(4), 171-175.

MARSON, S. M. (2014). Goffman and the infantilization of elderly persons: A theory in development. Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare, 41(4), 143-158.

Evans, N. B. (2014). How do general end-of-life treatment goals and values relate to specific treatment preferences? A population-based study. Palliative Medicine, 28(10), 1206-1212.

Maxwell, C. N. (2014). Persistence and adherence with dementia pharmacotherapy: Relevance of patient, provider, and system factors. Canadian Journal Of Psychiatry, 59(12), 624-631.

Now, let's try that "dementia" search again, using only psycINFO with these limiters: dementia as a subject heading, full text, scholarly/peer-reviewed journals, and empirical research. In this example, there were just over 4000 results. Here are the first six:

Schmitter-Edgecombe, M., & Parsey, C. M. (2014). Assessment of functional change and cognitive correlates in the progression from healthy cognitive aging to dementia. Neuropsychology, 28(6), 881-893. doi:10.1037/neu0000109

Penders, Y. H., Albers, G., Deliens, L., Vander Stichele, R., & Van den Block, L. (2015). Awareness of dementia by family carers of nursing home residents dying with dementia: A post-death study. Palliative Medicine, 29(1), 38-47. doi:10.1177/0269216314542261

Haberstroh, J., Müller, T., Knebel, M., Kaspar, R., Oswald, F., & Pantel, J. (2014). Can the Mini-Mental State Examination predict capacity to consent to treatment?. Geropsych: The Journal Of Gerontopsychology And Geriatric Psychiatry, 27(4), 151-159. doi:10.1024/1662-9647/a000113

Solberg, L. M., Solberg, L. B., & Peterson, E. N. (2014). Measuring impact of stress in sandwich generation caring for demented parents. Geropsych: The Journal Of Gerontopsychology And Geriatric Psychiatry, 27(4), 171-179. doi:10.1024/1662-9647/a000114

Chan, S. M., & O’Connor, D. L. (2014). Personhood: Including the Chinese person with dementia in research, policy, and practice. Journal Of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity In Social Work: Innovation In Theory, Research & Practice, 23(3-4), 190-206. doi:10.1080/15313204.2014.932731

Bokenberger, K., Pedersen, N. L., Gatz, M., & Dahl, A. K. (2014). The Type A behavior pattern and cardiovascular disease as predictors of dementia. Health Psychology, 33(12), 1593-1601. doi:10.1037/hea0000028

Notice that only one of these articles appears in both sets of results. That tells us, as researchers, that we need to search both collections to find all articles we need from EBSCOhost. It also reminds us to check some other sources, just to be certain we've found everything on our subject. Other key databases for this assignment include AccessScience, ScienceDirect, and SAGE Periodicals.

Access Science:  Considered to be one of the finest collections of science reference materials and is a great starting point for researching a science topic; online and fully searchable articles which are fully illustrated, including 2,000 biographies, 8,500 articles, 15,000 illustrations, and the latest news in science and technology.

Sage Premier: Covers subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, medicine and more. Full text articles are available from 1999 to the present.To limit your search to full text articles only, use the Advanced Seach option "SAGE Journals Available to Me."

ScienceDirect: An information source for scientific, technical, and medical research.