DE Descriptors

health- in de

hyperkinesis in de

death-and-dying in de

The DE field enables you to search in the Major Descriptors (MJ) and Minor Descriptors (MN) fields simultaneously.

These fields contain controlled vocabulary terms or subject headings, called descriptors, from the "Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms." The MJ field contains descriptors that describe major or focal concepts of the document; the MN field contains descriptors that describe concepts of the document that are not focal.

All descriptors locate documents by assigned controlled vocabulary, not free text words, and are independent of the occurrence of specific words in any field. For example, the search hyperkinesis in de retrieves all documents about that topic, although they may not specifically mention the word "hyperkinesis."

Search descriptors as a hyphenated, "bound" phrase or as individual words; a hyphenated search is the most efficient for multiword descriptors. Hyphenate one-word descriptors, for example, health- in de to limit a search to a single-word descriptor.

Descriptors also eliminate out-of-context occurrences. For example, the search running in de retrieves references to running as a physical activity, but the "free-text" search running also locates phrases such as "...a continuum running from...." Searching from the database Thesaurus limits the search to the DE field automatically.

Note: Records prior to 1967 contain only the phrase "No Terms Assigned" in this field.