The PsycINFO thesaurus helps you improve your search terms. Sometimes the reason you can't find the right type of article is because you use the wrong words.
Let's see how it works. Go to PsycINFO
You will see Thesaurus at the top left-hand corner.
1.) In the search box that is labelled, Browsing: APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms, you can enter your search terms.
In this example, enter eye-witness testimony. I want to use it as a search term but I don't know if eye-witness should be one word: eyewitness, two words: eye witness or hyphenated: eye-witness.
You can see from the result list in the thesaurus it says eyewitness use witnesses. So I learn that witnesses is a better search term to use (and I also see that eyewitness should probably be one word).
2.) So now click on the term witnesses in your result list. It will take you to the W's in the Thesaurus and then click on Witnesses again.
I am given a list of terms that I can use instead of or with my original search.
Here in this example I have ticked the box Witnesses and Major Concept and then hit add. Then I did the same again with Bystander effect and major concept.
You will see in the search box ((DE "Witnesses") OR (MM "Bystander Effect")) AND (MM "Witnesses" OR MM "Bystander Effect"). All this means it that you are searching for the words Witnesses or Bystander Effect especially in the subjects. (Major concept means that the computer searches for your search word in the subjects of the article.)
3.) You will now see in your results list that the terms of bystander effect and witnesses is a major idea in the papers that have been found.
Hopefully you can see now how helpful the PsycINFO thesaurus can be as a search tool.