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APA PsycInfo (Ovid) - Tutorial: Narrow or Expand Results

Tips on using PsycINFO, including using the subject headings, narrowing/expanding your search, finding case studies, how to save your searches

More than 80 results?

Before you review any results, be sure to get them under 80 in order to have the most relevant results. Try one or more of the ideas below:

1. The main way to narrow is to add more facets. If you only search for "Eating disorders", that will be too broad. Add treatments, populations, etc. to your search.

2. If you aren't sure how you want to narrow your topic, you could limit your results to only literature reviews, which will just give you an idea of what has been done in the field to see what sparks your interest as a particular area to study.

  • In the blue box of limits, scroll through the Methodology bix & select 0800 Literature review. Click Search.

3. Enter one of your search terms into the search again. This time, in the thesaurus, check the box "focus". This limits your search just to resources where that subject heading is the main focus of the article.

 

 

 

Too few results?

If there are not enough relevant results, try one or more of the following:

  1. Find additional subject headings

For any resource that looks useful, click Complete Reference for an article that seems interesting.

Image of: Complete Reference if the original search resulted in too few results.

On the next page, scroll past the abstract to find related "Subject Headings". Note: these are hyperlinked, but if you add them to the search box on the main page, you can go through the thesaurus to find related terms.

  1. Remove a concept from the search

If your topic has many facets, you might need to find articles on just two facets at a time, rather than trying to find articles that match the intersection of all parts of your topic.