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Tip #61: Mismatched MeSH in EBSCOhost APA PsycInfo

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You may have noticed that some references in EBSCOhost APA PsycInfo have two subject heading sections. One is labeled--somewhat ambiguously-- Subjects ; the other is more clearly marked as  Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) . Subjects  are, of course, from the APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms. According to APA, "approximately 33% of APA PsycInfo records are cross-listed in PubMed," and the MeSH field in APA PsycInfo was introduced in 2016 . A logical assumption, then, is that records since that date would include MeSH and that the terms in that section would match exactly what appears in whatever flavor of MEDLINE you search (EBSCOhost MEDLINE, PubMed, Ovid MEDLINE). But no! Here's an example, using the article  8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction induces brain changes similar to traditional long-term meditation practice—A systematic review  (doi:  10.1016/j.bandc.2016.07.001 ). These are the relevant sections from that reference in EBSCOhost APA P...

Tip #60: Controlled vocabulary field codes and their discontents in EBSCOhost APA PsycInfo

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The APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms is an essential indexing tool that is also an indispensable searching tool. That said, its utility in systematic searching is highly dependent on interface. Ovid APA PsycInfo In Ovid APA PsycInfo, per the Ovid Database Guide , the following searchable field codes for APA Thesaurus terms are available: SH: Subject Headings [Phrase Indexed] The Subject Headings (SH) field contains the Subject Headings (also known as "descriptors" or "index terms") from the American Psychological Association's Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms. Indexers at the APA use the terms to describe the topic or content of a document. HW:  Heading Word [Word Indexed] The Heading Word (HW) index allows you to retrieve every subject heading that includes a particular word by searching a single word in the Subject Heading (SH) field. In addition, there is a MeSH field in APA PsycInfo that can be searched using the following field codes: MH M...