PsycINFO is the best database to use for identifying scholarly and professional literature on psychology. Produced by the American Psychological Association, its coverage starts in the late 1800s. PsycINFO describes journal articles, books and book chapters, and dissertations.
PsycINFO offers special features for effective searching:
The PsycINFO "Age Group" field makes it very easy to identify articles specifically about young adults. These terms are defined in the APA's Record Structure for APA Databases. The most specific age group treated by the article is the age group that gets indexed by PsycINFO
For PsycINFOrecords 1996-present, the relevant age groups for emerging and young adults are:
Adolescence | 13-17 years |
Adulthood | 18 years and older |
Young Adulthood | 18-29 years |
Thirties | 30-39 years |
For PsycINFO records 1966-1995, only Adolescence and Adulthood were used for these age groups. Most pre-1967 PsycINFO records do not have Age Groups indexing.
Searching for Age Groups. Scroll down the PsycINFO Advanced Search page to the More Search Options : Age Group check box. Select the specific age group or groups that meet your interest. Then scroll back up and fill out the Advanced Search template with your subject terms.
PsycINFO's real strength is its Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, subject headings assigned to every PsycINFO record. Searching PsycINFO effectively means discovering and combining these subject headings.
Here are two ways to discover PsycINFO subject headings, using this example:
"I'm interested in research on friends lying to each other."