| Abstract: | The First Edication of The Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms was published in 1974 by the American Psycholigical Association to answer the need for controlled vocabulary to represent precissely the literature of psychology and related disciplines contained in Psychological Abstracts and the PsychINFO database. As the field of psychology has grown and evolved, five subsequent editions of the Thesaurus have improved and extended the original vocabulary of 4000 postable and nonpostable terms. In addition, several featues have been added, including a rotated alphabetical terms section, scope notes, posting notes, and, in the new Sixth Edition (1991), an index term clusters option. In maintaining the Thesaurus, PsychINFO's indexing staff seeks to reflect the ever-changing field of psychology and the literature that describes it. |
