PsycInfo: Managing your searches

If you are looking for the maximum possible number of results in PsycInfo, for example for a systematic review, you should build your search step-by-step (as recommended in the 'Boolean operators' section of 'Search tips' in this guide) and then go to 'Recent Searches' (your search history in PsycInfo) to combine your search results using AND, OR or NOT.  For example:

• Search #1: Any Field: "working while ill" OR Any Field: presenteeism OR Keywords: sickness presenteeism
• Search #2: Any Field: employee NEAR/5 attitude OR Any Field: employee NEAR/5 behavior OR Any Field: employee NEAR/5 behaviour
• Search #3: Index Terms: Employee Attitudes
• Search #4: Combine #2 OR #3
• Search #5: Combine #1 AND #4

As mentioned in the Introduction, your search history will be erased If you do not use PsycInfo for 30 minutes. To avoid this, it is recommended that you permanently save your searches by creating a personal My PsycNet account.  Select My PsycNet, register your username and password, and then log in.  Next, go to 'Recent Searches', select an individual search and choose the 'Save' (floppy disk) icon.

Your search strategy will be saved on the APA PsycNet server.  To retrieve your saved search, go to My PsycNet, then 'Saved Searches.' To re-run a search, you need to select the title of the search in 'Saved Searches'.

If you are working on a long-term project and are regularly repeating the same search, you should create a search alert.  A PsycInfo search alert will send you an email when any new records on your topic are added to the database.  To 'Set Email Alert', you can either:

• Select the bell icon at the top of a results page.

Or

• Select the bell icon in 'Recent Searches', where the icon accompanies each search that you have performed.