Psychology Research Guide

Addictions

Addictions are chronic disorders with psychological, biological, social, and environmental facets. Psychologists who study addictions aim to understand what creates addictions and how to help people affected by them. Addictions are varied and can include drugs, alcohol, food, video games, social media, and more. The following resources can help you narrow your topic, learn about the language used to describe psychology topics, and get you up to speed on the major advancements in this field.

Addictions Databases

Research in addiction psychology utilizes core psychology resources, as well as resources in medicine and sociology. You may find it helpful to search the following databases for your addiction topics or research questions, in addition to the core resources listed on the home page.

Addictions Subject Headings

You may find it helpful to take advantage of predefined subjects or subject headings in Shapiro Databases. These subjects are applied to articles and books by expert catalogers to help you find materials on your topic.

Consider using databases to perform subject searches, or incorporating words from applicable subjects into your keyword searches. Here are some addiction subjects to consider:

• Addictive Behaviors
• Alcohol
• Alcohol and Alcoholism
• Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research
• Alcoholism and Psychiatry Research
• Drug and Alcohol Dependence
• Drug Safety

Addictions Example Search

Not sure what you want to research exactly, but want to get a feel for the resources available? Try the following search in any of the databases listed above:

(Addictions OR "addictive behavior" OR "substance abuse" OR "alcohol dependence") AND Psych*

There isn't just one accepted word for this area of psychology, so we use OR boolean operators to tell the database any of the listed terms are relevant to our search. We use parenthesis to organize our search, and we stem or truncate the word psychology with the asterisk to tell the database that any ending of the word, as long as the letters psych is at the beginning of the word, will do. This way, the word psychological and other related terms will also be included. Where one idea is described with multiple words (addictive behavior, substance abuse, alcohol dependency) we enclose the words in quotation marks. This is called phrase searching and tells the database that these words are only relevant when they appear together and in that order.

Addictions Organization Websites