Conduct a Literature Search

Library Databases

Google Scholar
Provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. To get the full-text of articles, click the three parallel horizontal lines, then click 'Settings' and 'Library Links,' search for 'University of Idaho', and click 'Save.'

PsycArticles This link opens in a new window
Includes empirical articles from scholarly (or peer-reviewed) journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA) and allied organizations that cover general psychology as well as specialized basic, applied, clinical, and theoretical research in psychology.
Mental Measurements Yearbook with Tests in Print Internacional This link opens in a new window
Designed for novices and professionals alike, this database contains full-text reviews for test products in psychology, education, business and leadership. In addition, it provides a bibliography of English and Spanish-language tests.
* Full-text reviews of more than 3,000 contemporary testing instruments
*All previous editions of the yearbook dating back to 1938, providing more than 10,000 full-text reviews
*Tests In Print (TIP), a bibliographic database to all known commercially available English-language tests currently in print
*Pruebas Publicadas en Español (PPE), a bibliographical database that provides descriptions of more than 570 Spanish-language tests

Library databases and Google Scholar are two of the best resources to use when conducting literature searches.

To find literature about a topic, we first need to identify the topic's key concepts.

Sample Topic: What mental health challenges do elderly Latino immigrants face?

The next step is to brainstorm related keywords or synonyms that also reflect the topic's key concepts.

Sample Topic: What mental health challenges do elderly Latino immigrants face?

Key concepts	Related keywords
Mental health	Mental illness
Elderly	Older adults, aged, senior citizens, seniors
Latino	Latin American
Immigrants	Immigration, refugees

The final step is to select a library database and search for the topic using a few different search tricks.

Type your search terms into the search box in a library database or Google Scholar to find articles related to the topic.

Limit your search	Use the word AND (in capital letters) to limit the search by combining search terms. Example: elderly AND immigrants You don't have to use AND in Google Scholar, just put the search terms next to each other Example*: elderly immigrants
Search for a phrase	Use "quotation marks" to search for a phrase instead of the individual search terms. Example: "mental health"
Expand your search	Use the word OR (in capital letters) to expand the search by including synonyms or related keywords. Example: Latino OR "Latin American"
Exclude search terms	Use the word NOT (in capital letters) to exclude terms from the search results. Example: elderly NOT children
Combine search tricks	Create more complex searches by combining search tricks and using (parentheses). Example: (elderly OR seniors) AND immigrants AND Latino AND "mental health"