PsycInfo: Filters

When you perform an Advanced Search in PsycInfo, filters are a way of further focusing the results by including or excluding records that have been indexed according to one or more of the following:

• Age Group
• Population
• Document Type
• Research Methodology
• PsycInfo Classification
• Supplemental Material Type

The six filters above can be found in a drop-down menu on the Advanced Search home page or on the left-hand side of the results page.

To use 'Filters' on the Advanced Search home page:

1. Choose a filter from the first drop-down menu.
2. Select 'is' or 'is not' from the second drop-down menu.
3. Choose a value, e.g. Systematic Review. To select more than one value, press 'Control' on your keyboard as you select each value (e.g. Systematic Review OR Meta Analysis).
4. You can search for more than one filter at a time by selecting '+ add filter'.

PsycInfo has a dedicated filter for where the research took place and for the language of the indexed document (important, if you wish to focus on, for example, articles published in English). If you wish to apply one or both of these limits, you must use the 'Geographic Location' and/or 'Language' value in the second drop-down box in Advanced Search:

Each PsycInfo record includes one or two 'content classification codes' (four-digit numerical codes) that have been applied by APA indexers with the intention of summing-up a document's broad psychological subject area, e.g. 3340 Clinical Psychopharmacology.  The classification codes are listed in the 'PsycInfo Classification' Filter in Advanced Search, as well as on the APA website.

On the results page, in addition to the six filters that are available on the Advanced Search home page, you can also filter your results by 'Publication Type', 'Year', 'Index Term', 'Author Affiliation', 'Source', 'Author' and 'Tests and Measures'.  To illustrate:

• 'Publication Type' provides a number for the results that are in journals, books, dissertations, database collections or encyclopedias.
• 'Author Affiliation' might provide a clue to which institutions are most likely to publish research on a particular topic.
• 'Source' is an indication of which journals publish research on a particular topic.
• 'Tests and Measures' identifies how often a test or measure has been used in research.

'Filter Results' has the advantage that it tells you how many of your PsycInfo results are, for example, about a certain 'Age Group', e.g. 'Aged (65 years & older)'.  However, in 'Filter Results' you cannot simultaneously combine more than one value as you can in the six Filters on the Advanced Search home page