Evidence Synthesis Methods Interest Group

Hello all,

I'm working on a scoping review on the topic of "colorism and mental health" for a nursing team. I've worked on a few reviews in health sciences before, but this is the first one with enough of a social sciences overlap that it has seemed necessary to search a social sciences database. I have so far searched ProQuest's Social Science Database and ProQuest's APA PsycInfo, and given that PsycInfo has more than twice as many results, I'm leaning towards that one. 

I have a few things I'm not sure about, and I'm hoping to get input from someone more experienced in using ProQuest for reviews and / or conducing social sciences reviews. 

1. Are there any other social sciences databases you would consider for this topic instead of ProQuest's APA PsycInfo?
2. We also have access to PsycInfo through APA PsycNet. Are there benefits or downsides to conducting the search there instead of in ProQuest?
3. Is it effective and reproducible to search multiple ProQuest databases at once by combining thesaurus terms? 
4. Any other tips and tricks about using ProQuest for reviews? I do know about ProQuest's special truncation rule. 

Thank you!

Hi Jules - I'm sure others have more experience than me, but I would say that for any mental health topic PsycInfo is a key resource. So I wouldn't recommend searching another source instead of PsycInfo. I suspect there would be relevant and unique content in the Proquest Social Science database as well, so I would search that in addition to PsycInfo. 
And I wanted to add a word of caution about PsycInfo on the APA platform - it is terrible! It's not great on Proquest (OVID is the best suited platform for advanced searching) but anything is better than the APA platform. We had to suffer with it for years, but last year I led an evaluation project using a rubric that highlighted all its shortcomings for advanced searching, particularly around building line-by-line searches, re-ordering search lines, editing saved searches and bulk export. We were able to persuade Collections to spend a bit more money to switch from APA to the Proquest platform - hooray!
Do yourself a favour and stick with Proquest (unless you're lucky enough to have it on OVID). :-)

------------------------------
Elizabeth Yates
Research Librarian
James A. Gibson Library, Brock University
------------------------------