Search the FAQ

One approach to finding information for your correlational study is to start with the library's Psychology Research Guide http://library.uhd.edu/psychology. (To quickly locate that guide from  the library homepage select the Research Guides tab in  the middle of the page. You should see a link for Psychology toward the bottom of the box. The guide is also easily located  through the A-Z  and subject list links in the middle of the box.) Select PsycINFO from the listed databases on the Journals and Databases page of the guide. Next, select the Choose Databases link that you will see on the same line as the name of the database, PsycINFO. You will then see a list of other databases that are options for you to search at the same time.  For example, you may want to also select Academic Search Complete, Gender Studies Database, Political Science Complete, and SocINDEX with Full Text. Try searching by combining some of the following keywords. Be sure to select the Full Text and Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals options on the left side of the screen before you submit your search.

 

attractiveness AND (politicians or candidates)

 

attractiveness and perceptions

 

beauty and intelligence

 

beauty and perceptions

 

beauty and politics

 

body image

 

elections

 

impression formation

 

marital status

 

objectification research

 

physical attractiveness

 

physical-appearance-based bias

 

physical characteristics (human body)

 

political campaigns

 

political candidates

 

political elections

 

political psychology

 

politicians

 

presidential candidates

 

presidential character and competence

 

public opinion

 

stereotypes (social psychology)

 

voting

 

voting behavior

 

voting research

 

Examples:

 

objectification research AND voting behavior

 

political candidates AND elections AND physical-appearance-based bias

There are a couple of approaches you can take to refine your search: the first is to refine the results using the subject terms (or subject thesaurus terms) shown in the left-hand column; the second is to select one or two articles from your results that are the most related to your topic, then use the article's list of cited works or references as your next set of articles to retrieve and view.

The first approach requires you to look at the words and phrases presented as subjects or subject thesaurus terms. There will be a number of terms; pick two or three that you believe are most relevant. You can also use the date-range limiter to limit your results to just a few years, such as 2006-2011. This should help you focus your list of results. You may need to do this several times, trying different subject terms until you see a list of results that is of most interest to you.

The second approach requires you to pick one or two articles from your results. Make sure it is an article you believe strongly applies to your topic. Use the article’s list of works cited, or references, and search for the articles listed. This should greatly help you narrow the papers of interest to just a few.

To find surveys and statistics, just be sure you click the option in the left column for scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals. Most of the articles you get should include surveys and statistics because they’re based on research. They will usually say something in the abstract about doing a survey or using a survey instrument. Their results will include statistics.

 

 

To get the articles, click on any link you see to full text, or if there is no full text link, click on “Find this article.” If you want to be sure you see only articles that are full text in the database, click the option in the left column for “full text.”

 

Another way to start your searching is to use LibSearch located on the library's homepage. LibSearch is a powerful database that searches across  the library's resources. You can start by typing in some of the suggested terms from above. Once you have your results, you can limit your search to scholarly articles by clicking "Scholarly  (peer-review) Journals" located on the left side of the page. Also select "UHD" under "Filter by Campus" and consider whether you want to select other options available on the left side of the page to further refine your search. To access an article, click on the article title, which should take you to the article information page. Look for the link to the full-text PDF. 

 

You may want to also take a look at our video tutorial for LibSearch.