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PSY2005Lab Week 10: Literature Searching

Aims & Outcomes

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Provide an overview of a literature search Defining your research question and search strategyIntroduction to database searching

SummonGoogle ScholarWeb of KnowledgePsycinfo Grey Literature

In pairs complete a log book on a topic with 5 bibliographic references during the session

Defining the research question

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Search topic: Turning your search in to a series of questions

What is my topic? Keywords = crime, drug addiction and treatments

What question do I need to answer? What is it asking me to do? Drug addiction treatments for offenders What research has been conducted on the use of therapy for

offenders who take drugs?What type of information will best answer the question? Journal articles?

Statistics? Official reports? Journal articles and official reports

Which areas of the world are you interested in? Western Europe/USA/Australia/developing world etc…

Are you interested in a particular population or patient group? Offenders with drug problems

How far back in time can you search before the information becomes irrelevant? 1990

Planning your search …. 1

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Boring but WORTH IT! Pick out your concepts and separate them

drugs, addiction, therapy, offenders, etcThink of other words that are similar to your key

words but represent the same conceptsIllegal drugs, Counselling, criminals,

programmes (programs)Think of narrower words that fit into your terms to

hone your search if you’re getting too much information

Planning your search ... 2

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Search strategies Systematic – you try to find all relevant material – consider what type of

assessment you are doing and how big it is (how many words) and how big the topic is (it may be impossible if your topic is too general!)

Retrospective – you find the most recent material and work backwards Citation – you follow leads from useful articles, books and reading lists Targeted – you restrict your topic and focus in on a narrow area of the

literature NOTE you can often build an answer to a very general question like this (pick a few select aspects which cover the scope of the large topic you are addressing and this will make your life easier) For e.g. Effect on child development of postnatal depression

- Could look at 1 article from a few key age groups and answer your question that way.

Can you think of how we could target in our search on addiction and offenders?

Useful clues/things to pick up on

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Read and repeat the processLook for key words in the relevant literatureLiterature searching is a cycle – you will often need to improve your

search / play around with a few different searches Search strategies

Citation – you follow leads from useful articles, books and reading lists

Expanding your keyword base as you go along – keep an eye out for other recurring synonyms/alternative keywords in your search results

Start big – you may have to get smaller and more specific if you don’t want to look through hundreds of results!

Limiting the search strategye.g. randomized trials; publication date; empirical study; English

language; type of drug; type of offender (race/age/crime)

Useful clues/things to pick up on

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Watch out for spellings US/UK behavior / behaviour Counselor / counselling

Truncate your term* Offend* will find offending, offender, offenders Counsel* will find counselling, counsellor, counsellors

Keep phrases together with speech marks “substance abuse”

Exercise 1 - Keywords

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Crime Drug addiction Treatment

• On the sheet .... (ignore the arrows for now)

• List synonyms (alternative keywords) and narrower terms for your basic search terms

• This will enable you to run bigger searches or lots of little searches and find more results

Synonyms

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Crime Drug addiction Treatment

Criminal* “Substance abuse” Therapy

Offender* “Illicit drugs” Counsel*

Convict* “Illegal drugs” Program*

“Criminal population”

Inmate*

“Criminal justice system”

Crime Drug addiction Treatment

“Youth offenders” Opiates “Talk therapy”

“Repeat offenders” “Psychotropic drugs” “Behavioural therapy”

“First time offenders” “Prescription drugs” Medicat*

“Violent offenders” Specific drug names ... Prozac cannabis, crack cocaine, heroin etc

“Family therapy”

HMP “residential therapy”

Narrower Terms

Google Scholar

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Important – did you know you can set Google Scholar to flag up everything you have paid access to through the University?

Please follow along and personalise your GSGoogle Scholar > settings

Personalising Google Scholar ...

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• Click library links on the left hand side

• Search ‘middlesex university’ and select ‘Middlesex University – Full Text @ Middlesex’

Searching Google Scholar ...

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• Search ‘crime drug addiction treatment’ • Is there anything you notice about the results?

Searching Google Scholar ...

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One result is a citation – there’s no file but it looks very relevant and I want to know a bit more

Click on ‘Cite’ and copy and paste the full citation into Google The top three results are

from the organisational website .org – should be authoritative

I can download the file, and the follow up report

Several useful sections on treatment

Exercise 2 - Google Scholar

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Work in pairs Have a play! Put your main keywords in and see what you get Then try alternative or narrower keywords and

compare the relevance and ‘usefulness’ of what you find

Find 1 full text article you think useful for this question and note it in your log book in your pairs

Grab your tutor or I for help

Summon

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Cross searches everything the University has access to through the library – books, ebooks, journals, conference proceedings, newspapers etc

Simple search function But limited in that you can’t build an advanced searchCross searching all subjects so you need to be aware of terms that

recur in other subject areas ie; development is not a useful search term because it has so many applications! Would need to add ‘psychology’ or ‘cognitive’ etc

REMEMBER Simple search often = longer looking through results

More sophisticated search = a little longer to construct your search but results should be more specific and relevant

Getting into the databases....

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REMEMBER! Always use MyUniHub as a gateway to library

resources

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Searching Summon ....

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May need to add psychology or other qualifying keywords Limits are on the left hand side, full text online only, date,

language, resource type ...... Will get a variety of resources in one go – the major strength of

Summon If it’s an ebook and you’re not sure why the search picked it up

have a look at the contents – probably a relevant chapter

Some results not relevant – the downside of searching so many subject resources in one go. So need to have a good look through the first few pages

Exercise 3 – Summon

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Work in the same pairs Have a play! Put your main keywords in and see what you get Then try alternative or narrower keywords and

compare the relevance and ‘usefulness’ of what you find

Find 1 reference for an item (book, journal, newspaper article) you think useful for this question and note it in your log book in your pairs

Grab your tutor or I for help

PsycInfo

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Specific psychology database - subject specific information unlike other databases like Summon (searches all subjects) or Web of Knowledge (search broadly across sciences or social sciences)

Articles are tagged with psychology subject headings when indexed – useful for searching

Not completely full text but can limit results to full text Run by APA Worth noting US bias – if being comprehensive in search

would have to take this into account and use other resources as well

Getting into the databases....

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REMEMBER! Always use MyUniHub as a gateway to library

resources

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• Select Psycinfo • You can select PsycARTICLES Full Text but you will get far fewer results – to start it’s best to search PsycInfo and then limit within that to full text if you get enough results

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• ALWAYS use advanced search – this allows you to combine your different concepts with ‘AND’ or ‘OR’ • And leave ‘Map subject term heading’ ticked – this gives you a useful way of accessing records tagged as being in a subject area and also finding the most common ‘official’ term used for your topic in journal articles

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• Choose any suitable subject headings• Narrow your scope IF it’s useful • Or keep your words as a free keyword search as you entered them

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• Enter all your synonyms for the first concept – ONE BY ONE • If you have them one separate lines you can combine them • And also take out things you think aren't working without messing up your search

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• You now need to combine your synonyms with ‘OR’ to get everything under one topic referred to by different names

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First concept

Second concept

Third concept

• Now you have three results on your list which represent each concept with a variety of words6, 9 and 13 • You need to combine these to find results on your question - what do we combine these with?

Results!

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You need to have a look and evaluate how relevant the results on the first few pages are

You're using an academic journal database so you don't need to worry too much about authority but you do need to think about

Currency Relevance Objectivity

Now you have results you can limit to full text or limit to a time frame on the left hand side menu

Exercise 4 – PsycInfo

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Work in the same pairs Have a look at these results and see if you can find a useful

reference – limit the search by date or another element if you want

Now try and do a similar search combining the narrower more specific keywords we came up with (Slide 9 or your worksheets)

Example = ‘repeat offenders’ AND ‘drug addiction’ AND ‘behavioural therapy’

REMEMBER to select any relevant subject headings REMEMBER alternative UK/US spellings! Find 1 reference for an item (book, journal, newspaper article)

you think useful for this question and note it in your log book in your pairs

Grab your tutor or I for help

Social Sciences Citation Index

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Social SciencesWill take you to the Web of Knowledge platform On here you can also select Sciences Citation Index if

you want to search across both

Social Sciences Citation Index

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Slightly different search screenExample search

Works in a similar way but you should group your concept terms in each box and type ‘OR’ between them (most straightforward way)

Exercise 5 - SSCI

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Work in the same pairs Search your 3 concept terms in the 3 boxesMake sure the drop down boxes on the left say ‘AND’

so the three concepts combine to find things about crime AND drugs AND treatment

REMEMBER alternative UK/US spellings! Can limit by date if you think recent information is

bestFind 1 reference for an item (book, journal, newspaper

article) you think useful for this question and note it in your log book in your pairs

Grab your tutor or I for help

Getting Full text of journal articles

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If you’re lucky!It will be available as a PDF on the database (look for

PDF symbol)If you’re not lucky!

Double check the library catalogue by copying journal name into the ‘journal search’. If we have it there’ll be a record and a link.

Go to Google Scholar and look for PDF signsGo to Author’s website/institution’s repository, often

they have left a pre publisher versionOrder a copy via the inter-library loan (£3.00)http://unihub.mdx.ac.uk/study/library/resources/ill/index.aspx

Evaluating what you’ve found

Key questionsIs it what you need and is it trustworthy?

What criteria would you use to assess the relevance and quality of the information?

Currency How old is this information? When was it last updated? Is this important for the assignment?

Authority Who is the author? Site creator, organisation, scholarly / peer reviewed journals etc?

Intent What is the purpose of the website / information? e.g. financial gain, academic

Relevance Is this what I need? Will it answer my question? Is it at the right level?

Objectivity Balanced view? Opposing views represented? References?

Government, organisational reports and conference proceedings

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Finding ‘Grey Literature’

Researching the ‘grey literature’

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What is grey literature?“information produced on all levels of government,

academia, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing.”*

Example sources: Government reports; theses and dissertations; technical reports; conference proceedings; Newsletters; clinical trials.

Emerging sources: e-prints; preprints; blogs; wiki-articles; databases of ongoing research; electronic and social networks

For dissertations you can check the MDX library or another Central London university library catalogue (you may be able to access depending on policy)

Grey literature – starting with Google – finding the gateway or organisation

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Do you really need it? What is your assignment? What does it ask you to do? How many resources are you using overall? What is the word count?

Google your keywords

Look for a well known organisation/charity/health/education institution

Particularly look for web addresses .gov and .org

Can search for the report subject i.e. Crime, drug addiction and treatment

OR you can search for organisations in that area i.e.; government/research/charity organisations around drug abuse. Find the organisations website and search on there

Example Google search for Grey Lit

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IGNORE the yellow box – people have paid to

be there!

• I have phrased the keywords slightly differently as it’s not a journal database and I can’t put in alternative terms together, I instead need to do a few quick searches with different synonyms and see what I get.

Tips for finding ‘grey literature’

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Searching techniquesSmall and obscure libraries; Googling (google and scholar); contacting

experts in the field; blogsearch, podsearch; scanning reference lists (e.g. Academics CV’s)

Getting access – if the report is not available for free on the site you’re on, Google away and see if you can find a PDF – just look closely to check it’s the real/right/up to date document

Signs of authenticity = logo, full title, CORRECT DATE, full document DO NOT USE A HTML TEXT FILE VERSION of an official report – text may

have been altered in some way (an official webpage is fine but don’t download and use word docs for this )

When you get your results – the report may be huge – you probably don’t need to read the whole thing!

Find the relevant section OR master the art of skimming !

Grey lit – gateway sources

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www.greylit.orghttp://www.drugscope.org.uk/http://www.nih.gov/http://www.who.int/en/ (WHO bulletin is on here and

searchable) http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/science-research/research-

statistics/publications/home-office-research-reports/http://www.sehd.scot.nhs.uk/http://www.unesco.org/new/en/http://www.bps.org.uk/http://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/http://www.greynet.org/greysourceindex.html I will add these links to the Psychology library subject

guide - soon!

Exercise 6 – Grey Literature

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Work in the same pairs Search your basic concept terms in Google or one of

the websites provided (use general search box or go to relevant section of website) and see if you can find a report or conference paper that’s relevant

REMEMBER alternative UK/US spellings! Use CAIRO slide (next slide) to evaluate what you find

and decide if it’s ok to use (especially if using Google)Find 1 reference for an item (book, journal, newspaper

article) you think useful for this question and note it in your log book in your pairs

Grab your tutor or I for help

Currency How old is this information? When was it last updated? Is this important for the assignment?

Authority Who is the author? Site creator, organisation, scholarly / peer reviewed journals etc?

Intent What is the purpose of the website / information? e.g. financial gain, academic

Relevance Is this what I need? Will it answer my question? Is it at the right level?

Objectivity Balanced view? Opposing views represented? References?

Need help?

Librarians in the Specialist Zone (1st floor) 11-3 Monday - Friday

Ask a Librarian http://askalibrarian.mdx.ac.uk/Psychology Library Subject Guide - Viv’s contact

details and this and other power points/helpsheets http://libguides.mdx.ac.uk/psy