When conducting a literature search in psychology, what is the primary function of a database thesaurus?

A database thesaurus is a built-in tool that helps users identify the appropriate standardized index terms for their literature search. When an initial search term is too broad and returns an overwhelming number of records, the thesaurus can provide more specific index terms to help narrow down the results to highly relevant articles.

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A database index term is a standardized phrase assigned to an academic database record to categorize the content of a publication. Because these terms are standardized—such as indexing all research on male-female differences under “Human Sex Differences”—they are especially helpful for locating relevant literature consistently, regardless of the specific keywords the original authors used.

Database Index Term

A database search term is a specific word or phrase entered into a computer interface to retrieve relevant records from an academic database. Because databases contain millions of records, users often need to experiment with different combinations and specificities of search terms to narrow down their results to highly relevant articles.

Database Search Term

https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/psychmethods4e/

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