Medical subject headings versus American Psychological Association Index Terms: indexing eating disorders

To analyze the keywords used in articles published in eating disorder journals indexed in MEDLINE to determine their correspondence with the MeSH or the APA-Terms. Descriptive bibliometric study. We established three inclusion criteria: articles had to be original, to contain keywords, and to have been in the MEDLINE database in the last 5 years. 918 original with 1,868 different keywords were studied. Eight original articles (0.87 %) presented complete correspondence between the keywords used and the indexing terms. Of the keywords studied, 300 (16.06 %) coincided with MeSH and 366 (19.59 %) with APA-Terms. The comparison between keywords matching MeSH and those matching APA-Terms, we found significant differences indicating greater agreement with APA-Terms (p < 0.001). The weak agreement between keywords and indexing terms may hinder the cataloguing of eating disorder articles. The authors of these studies made greater use of keywords related to APA-Terms.