Searching for journal articles using the PsycARTICLES database

First of all - what is PsycARTICLES, and what does it do?

PsycARTICLES is a database of psychological literature from the 1800s to the present. It contains records for material in over 2,000 journals, as well as books, book chapters, technical reports, and dissertations. You can search for information using a range of options including:-

subject,
journal name,
author,
title of an article

Our first exercise involves finding references where you have incomplete information.

1. Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham published an article on personality traits and academic performance in the European Journal of Personality. The article starts on page 237.

Here we don't know the title of the article, or the date of publication. The European Journal of Personality commenced publication in 1987, and sitting with piles of journals checking page 237 in every volume doesn't appeal!!

PsycARTICLES TO THE RESCUE!!

Open PsycATICLES by clicking on the link below

Go to PsycARTICLES

• Try typing the following into the Find box.
• chamorro-premuzic and furnham and european journal of personality
  (You don't need to worry about capital letters as the database isn't case sensitive.)
• Now click on Search
• Details of the article will be displayed.
• Now click on the PDF Full Text link, and you'll have the full text of the article.

2. We want a second article from the European Journal of Personality. This one is by De Fruyt and Mervielde, and has the words "educational streaming and achievement" in the title of the article.

• This time try typing the following into the Find box.
  As we're not sure how the database will deal with names with "De" at the beginning we'll use inverted commas around "De Fruyt" just to make sure the two words are searched together as a phrase.
• "de fruyt" and mervielde and european journal of personality and "educational streaming and achievement"
• Now click on Search
• Details of the article will be displayed.
• Now click on the PDF Full Text link, and you'll have the full text of the article.

3. The third article we need is by Harris, and the title begins with "Personalities of students in three faculties". We have no idea of the name of the journal or the year of publication.

Can PsycINFO find this one?

• Try typing the following into the Find box.
• harris and "personalities of students in three faculties "
• Now click on Search
• Details of the article will be displayed.
• Now click on Check Fulltext Options , and you'll find a link to the full text of the article.

4. The last article we need is by Costa and McCrae and has the title "Four ways five factors are basic"

• This time try typing the following into the Find box.
• costa and mccrae and "four ways five factors are basic"
• Now click on Search
• Details of the article will be displayed.
• Now click on Check Fulltext Options , and you'll find a link to the full text of the article.

Now that we've found these four references how do we find additional articles on personality traits and academic achievement?

It's simple - we perform a search using PsycARTICLES's Thesaurus. Just follow the steps below.

1. Click on the Thesaurus button at the top of the screen

2. At the next screen type personality traits in the Browse for box. Then click on Browse

3. The Thesaurus term personality traits will then be displayed.

4. At this screen you need to do four things

• Click in the box to the left of Personality Traits
• Click in the box on the right of the screen for Major Concept - this will ensure that only articles where this topic is an important part of the content will be found.
• Change the add to search using from or to and
• Click on Add

6. Now repeat steps 2, 3 and 4, but this time the term we are searching for is academic achievement.

7. At the end of these steps your screen should look like this