When databases such as PsycINFO are created, the articles and books to be included are assigned classification terms based on a fixed set of words called a "controlled vocabulary."  Although this vocabulary changes from time to time, it is an attempt to classify material in a consistent way so that those searching for information on a particular topic can find it. 

Therefore, when you begin a search, it is critical that you first check to see if the words you are using for your search are part of this special vocabulary.  If you are doing a search using words that make perfect sense to you but are not part of this special vocabulary, you are likely to miss essential sources.  You can also find yourself confronted with several hundred "hits" only some of which are relative to your topic.

In addition, because many terms are sometimes used to represent a particular concept, we need to discover what alternative terms might be used by database creators to represent the same concept. 

To find the vocabulary terms appropriate to a particular topic and to find the appropriate alternative terms, we need to use the Thesaurus feature of PsycINFO.

Let's say that you want to find information on "creativity."  On the main PsycINFO screen, select the Thesaurus tab, type creativity, and the click Go To Term.

The next screen will be a list of words from the "controlled vocabulary" related to creativity.  Note that there are two major heading, "creativity" and "creativity measurement."  Since we are just interested in the general concept of creativity, just click on the word and this screen will appear:

This page provides valuable information about the concept, including a definition.  Note the two USED FOR entries (innovativeness, originality). If you had used these terms in a search you would have missed many useful articles because these terms are not used to classify research material.

In our case, the "Related terms" list is important.  These are additional terms that might be used to classify articles so if limited our search to creativity we might miss some useful material that was classified as "gifted."  A thorough search would involve searching on all (or at least most) of these terms.  Make a note of the terms you will want to include in a complete search and see the section on Combining Searches to see how to search for several terms at the same time.

Exploding Terms

Another important use of the Thesaurus enables us to combine terms in a single search.  Let's say we want to locate information on the cognitive aspects of personality and how they might inluence learning.  We would begin by entering "personality" in the the Thesaurus window.  Since personality is such a complex idea we find a long list of terms, one of which is "cognitive style."  If you look at the definition of this term (just click on the term), it appears that this is just what we are after.  However, the Thesaurus entry also tells us that there are some other terms we might want to look at.  Here is the result:

Since all of the "More Specific (narrower) terms" might also be useful, it would be nice if we could search on "Cognitive Style" and all of the more specific terms.  Well, we can!  Select Cognitive Style (click the box to the left), then click the Explode Marked button and you will get a search that includes the main term and all the narrower terms--that is what Explode means. 

A great way to quickly locate articles that might use different, but related terms.

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