There are a number of helpful tips and hints you can use to improve your search results. For example, you can use Boolean operators to link terms together; limit the search to a specific title; and /or restrict the search to a particular date range.
Note: Stopwords are commonly used words such as articles, pronouns, and prepositions. These words are not indexed for searching in the database. For example, 'the', 'for', and 'of' are stopwords. When a stopword is used in a query, any single word or no word is retrieved in place of the stopword. When searching strings that contain stopwords or a Boolean operator, it is necessary to use quotation marks.
Sometimes a search can be overly general (results equal too many hits) or overly specific (results equal too few hits). To fine tune your search, you can use AND, OR, and NOT operators to link your search words together. These operators will help you narrow or broaden your search to better express the terms you are looking for and to retrieve the exact information you need quickly.
USING THE "AND" OPERATOR: If you have a search term that is too general, you can append several terms together using "AND". By stringing key terms together, you can further define your search and reduce the number of results. Note: Unless you define a specific search field, the result list will contain references where all your search terms are located in either the citation, full display or full text.
USING THE "OR" OPERATOR: In order to broaden a search, you can link terms together by using the "OR" operator. By using "OR" to link your terms together you can find documents on many topics. Linked by this operator, your words are searched simultaneously and independently of each other.
USING THE "NOT" OPERATOR: In order to narrow a search, you can link words together by using the "NOT" operator. This operator will help you to filter out specific topics you do not wish included as part of your search.
Parentheses also may be used to control a search query. Without parentheses, a search is executed from left to right. Words that you enclose in parentheses are searched first. Why is this important? Parentheses allow you to control and define the way the search will be executed. The left phrase in parentheses is searched first; then based upon those results the second phrase in parentheses is searched.
Generalized Search:
early education OR pre-school AND adult education OR secondary schools
Focused Search:
(early education OR pre-school) AND (adult education OR secondary schools)
In the first example, the search will retrieve everything on "early education" as well as references to the terms "pre-school" and "adult education", and everything on "secondary schools".
In the second example, we have used the parentheses to control our query to only find articles about "early education or pre-school" that reference "adult education or secondary schools".
Psychometric Tests: are tools used to assess various individual factors (personality, values, motivations, abilities) that predict behaviours and outcomes (job performance) in various circumstances (different jobs). Other tools include interviews, work-sampling tasks, case-studies, group-activities, and reference checks. https://www.science.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/Psychometric_Guide.pdf
APA PsycTests®, produced by the American Psychological Association (APA), is a one-of-a-kind database providing descriptive summaries, full text, and relevant citations on the development and assessment of tests and measures that can be used in research and teaching. Coverage dates from 1910 to the present.
The database serves as a repository for the full text (when available) of psychological tests and measures as well as a source of structured information about tests of relevance to psychologists and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work.
Each record includes data on the scope of the test, test implementation, a high-level overview of the test’s development, and reliability and validity data (when available).
Updated monthly, APA PsycTests® includes test profiles and actual tests or test items for:
Content coverage includes a diverse array of subject areas and types of tests, including: