Marriage and Family Therapy

When searching for scholarly articles, it's useful to try several different search strategies, such as the ones shown below. Subject terms can focus your search quickly and effectively, but also try using keywords within the Select-a-Field drop-down, especially when searching multiple databases at once.

Step 1:  Start your search for scholarly articles in an article database such as APA PsycInfo or Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection.  

Step 2:  Search for one or more of the terms from your topic (e.g. the effects of divorce on adolescents), such as divorce. 

• Separate the terms using AND (to find articles with all terms) or OR (to find articles with either term).  
• Using an asterisk (*) will truncate the ending of a word and search for all variations (i.e. divorc* would find divorce, divorced, and divorcing).
• Limiting to Subjects will narrow your search to articles on that topic, rather than those that may mention the term.

Step 3: When searching for topics related to marriage and family, it can be helpful to limit to a subset of articles on those topics.  To do that, type in 2950 or 3313 and change the drop-down menu to Classification.  Doing so searches those areas in the PsycInfo Classification Codes (locate additional relevant categories on the Advanced Search page or on the APA website).

2950 Marriage & Family 

3313 Group & Family Therapy 

Step 4:  Check the box for Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals on the left under Source Types and click the Update button.

Step 5:  On the left under Subject, browse and check boxes for terms related to your topic and Update.  Some related terms here are divorce and marital separation.   Selecting divorce here narrows your search to articles with divorce as the main concept being discussed.

Step 6: To search for the adolescents part of the topic, use the Age facet on the left to limit to adolescence (13-17 yrs).

Step 7:  When you find a helpful article, look at the Cited References and Times Cited in this Database to find more articles on the same topic.

Step 8: Don't see the full text of the article? Click check for full text to link directly to the article or search Google Scholar to see if we have the journal full text in print or in another database.  If we do not have full text access, Request via Interlibrary Loan and you'll receive it within about a week.

There are two main ways to search for access to a specific article (other than using the "check for full text" link within a database) - searching SPU Primo by journal title or Google Scholar by article title.  For other options to access the full-text, see Finding the Full Text.

Search SPU Primo by journal title:

Step 1: Type in the journal title in the SPU Primo search box and click search.

Step 2: Scan the result list for the journal.  There may be more than one record if we have access in print or microfilm as well as online.

Step 3: Click Online Access for full text or click Check Holdings or the journal title to verify that the year of the article you need is available through the database options.  In this case, the most recent year is not available online.

If there is no online access, click on Get It to view print holdings and access the article on the lower level of the library. 

Step 4: Choose a database with access.  Then either browse by issue or search within the publication to find the article you need.

Search Google Scholar by article title:

This option can be faster, as long as all the links work correctly.  Make sure you are either searching from on-campus or using the link above so that it links to SPU databases.

Step 1: Copy and paste the article title into the Google Scholar search box and click search.

Step 2: If SPU has access, there will be a link on the right side.  There may be access to the article in other ways as well.

Step 3: After clicking on Full-Text@SPU Library, select any one of the options listed to access the full article.