PsycInfo

It just goes to show that you never know what gems are hidden in a database or where you find an interesting article about your topic! I was very nervous about searching PsycInfo of my topic because I was not sure how cybersecurity would fit into this database or what element of this technical field would be covered.  This concern led to me to try a quick and dirty search simply for “cybersecurity” to see if anything would even come up.

I was completely surprised to find a very interesting and relevant article in the first two results!

The article, entitled “The Role of Psychology In Enhancing Cybersecurity”, seemed like the perfect result. The only problem is that it was not available as full-text online! But the abstract did alert me to a new term that would help me to continue my search – “cyberpsychology”.

“Cyberpsychology” actually encapsulates a wide range of topics, from how we interact with computers to how much we share on our social networks.  To reduce the number of results, I added a second term (“privacy”) and limited my search to those articles with linked full text.

The result that interested me the most is titled “Social Media as a Research Environment”, a short article covering the best practices for using social media to research cyberpsychology topics and ethics to using social media for research purposes.

What I Learned

Despite my interest in cybersecurity and privacy measures, I had no idea that the field of cyberpsychology existed!! Although I had read about many of the topics that fall under that category, I had never heard the term before. I think is a perfect example of pearl searching, in a way – I found what seemed like a perfect article, but it didn’t work out. However, the abstract and subjects helped me to find thousands of other articles that were related to my topic, allowing me to find an article that was relevant and available quickly.

Reflection

I found PsycInfo to be easy to search, with a simply, user-friendly interface. As always, the ability within EBSCO databases to limit my search instantly from the panel to the left of my results is always appreciated. I find it difficult to limit a search ahead of time, especially with a topic like cybersecurity where you are unsure if you will return any meaningful results.