Subject Headings are terms that are most commonly used to describe the topic that a resource covers. Unlike keywords, which are user generated, subject headings are created and maintained by an authoritative institution. For example, since Williams Libraries organizes our resources using the Library of Congress Classification, we also utilize Library of Congress Subject Headings to provide access to our collections by subject.
Databases such as PsycInfo and PubMed do something similar but creating their own authoritative lists of subject headings, also called index terms. On this page you will find pointers for using the American Psychological Association (APA) Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms used to organize PsycInfo, and MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) designed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) used to organize articles in PubMed.
Search for controlled vocabulary by in PsycInfo by navigating to the "Subjects" tab under the advanced search boxes. These terms are agreed-upon by catalogers when updating the database, and if you use them, you will be more precise in your search while eliminating the need to account for synonyms.
I would recommend searching using the "Term begins with" option if you have a pretty good idea of the term you are looking for. But using the "relevancy ranked" option is a good idea if you are not finding the terms you are looking for.
Once you have found your desired search term, take a moment to explore broader and narrower terms in order to understand the context of this term in the index heirarchy.
Select a term by clicking the check box and choosing "Add to search" on the upper right. Your selected term will be added to one of the boxes in your advanced search query. You can add as many terms as you want, changing boolean opperators as you see fit, until you have crafted a search query entirely composed of index terms.
Build a PubMed search query by selecting MeSH terms and adding them to the PubMed Search Builder on the upper-right side of your screen. Choose appropriate subheadings to stay within a particular research field or discipline. If you are interested, take a look at the previous indexing of the term at the bottom of the page to gain a more contextual understanding of changing terminology.
Search tools like the library catalog and article databases use subject headings to describe sources and the topics they cover. You can use these subject headings to find other sources:
Combine multiple, similar subject headings using OR between them to create a broad, comprehensive search.
"Entry terms, sometimes called "See cross-references" in printed listings, are synonyms, alternate forms, and other closely related terms in a given MeSH record that are generally used interchangeably with the preferred Descriptor term for the purpose of indexing and retrieval. This greatly increases the access points to the citations since a searcher may not know the exact preferred term for a MeSH Descriptor and there are frequently terms which mean the same thing when the article is indexed."
Citation:
National Library of Medicine. (2023, December 4). Use of MeSH in Online Retrieval [Technical Documentation]. Nlm.Nih.Gov; U.S. National Library of Medicine.