Sexy searching: A hot date with a database!

Sexy searching: A hot date with a database! Blame Chris for this presentation. Connie had nothing to do with it.

Define your topic so you can be specific about what you’re searching for. Imagine you’re doing a paper on social interactions and nursing research utilization.

Formulate a research question. EG: What is the influence of social interactions on research utilization in nursing?

Break it down into its basic elements. Keywords: • Research Utilization • Social interactions • Nursing

Consider which database to use For example • CINAHL • Medline • Health Source: Nursing / Academic Edition • AMED (Allied and Complementary Medicine)

Keywords Any words that describe your topic. Problem: • Researching something isn’t that different from studying something. • An analysis can be used to mean something substantially the same as an investigation or a study. • Nursing can be a career or a way to feed a baby.

Keyword searching • Looks for your search terms in every field of the record. Advantage: Nets lots of hits, which can help if you’re working on an obscure topic. Problem: Can net thousands of hits (most of them irrelevant) for most topics.

Subject Headings • Controlled vocabulary: eliminates synonyms • EG: CINAHL uses “Nursing” only to refer to the career, and uses the term “Breast Feeding” to refer to nursing a baby.

Subject Headings are listed in thesauri. • CINAHL Subject Headings • CINAHL (e.g. Nursing Knowledge) • Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) (Z 695.1 M48 M48) • Used in MEDLINE database (Nursing Knowledge not included; try Health Knowledge, Nursing Theory). • Library of Congress Subject Headings (Z 695 L69 1996 ) • Used to classify U of A library books

Refine the search if necessary • Try different search terms • Try a different data base • Try a TITLE SEARCH if a KEYWORD SEARCH doesn’t work

Title searches Searches only the title field Good if: • You know only a few words from a title • A subject heading search doesn’t net any results (authors may have used your terms in the title of the article) • Keyword search results in too many irrelevant hits to look through

EXAMPLES • research utilization and nurses / title search = 23 hits • research utilization and nurses / keyword search = 144 hits It is much easier to browse through 23 items than 144 to look for relevant papers or articles.

Boolean Operators • AND: tells the database to look for records that contain all the terms joined by AND. EG: “Interpersonal Relations AND Nursing Practice, Evidence Based” will look for records that contain both terms. If a record only has one of those terms, the data base won’t include it among the search results.

Boolean Operators • OR: tells the database to look for either of the search terms. EG: “Interpersonal Relations OR Nursing Practice, Evidence Based” will look for every record containing the term “Interpersonal Relations,” every record containing the term “Nursing Practice, Evidence Based,” and every record containing both terms.

Boolean Operators • NOT: tells the database to look for records that include one search term, but to exclude records that don’t contain the second search term. EG: “Interpersonal Relations NOT Nursing Practice, Evidence Based” will bring back every record that contains the term “Interpersonal Relations,” unless it contains the term “Nursing Practice, Evidence Based.” Records containing that latter term will be excluded from the search results.

Truncation • Truncation: Tells the database to find a word stem, plus variations of the word. • EG: CINAHL and MEDLINE use $ for truncation. Nurs$ will find Nurse, Nurses, Nursing, and Nursed.

Truncation • Caution: Medi$ will bring back Medical, Medicine, Medicinal, Medicated, Meditate, Meditating, Meditated, Mediocre, Medieval, etc.

Truncation • Limit the number of truncated characters by inserting a number after the $. EG: Nurs$2 will find nurse, nurses, and nursed, but not nursing. • Normally OVID databases don’t allow truncation with keyword searches, but by adding .mp to the search term, you can get around this limitation. EG: nurs$.mp

Wildcards • Wildcards: replaces a letter with a symbol that tells the database to search for every variation on a word. In OVID databases, you can use # or ?

Wildcards • # replaces any single character • EG: wom#n finds “woman,” “women,” “womin” and “womyn.” • ? replaces one or no characters • EG: colo?r finds “color” or “colours”

Google Scholar • Go to www.google.com and click on the Scholar link above the search box. • Google Scholar searches the Web for academic publications, theses, dissertations, etc.

Google Scholar • Use quotes to find phrases • EG: “Knowledge Utilization” • Use the advanced search page to find specific authors, titles, journals or date ranges. • To find articles published from a certain date to the present, enter the start date in the first search box and leave the second search box blank.

Google Scholar • [Citation] means the article is not available on line, but is cited in other publications available on line. Therefore, you cannot click on a title that is prefaced by a [Citation] note. • However, you may be able to find the article in the U of A library.

Boolean Operators in Google • AND: Google automatically treats every search as having AND in it, so you don’t need to type it. EG: “Knowledge Utilization” Nursing is the same as “Knowledge Utilization” AND Nursing. • NB: The operator AND must be written in capital letters. Google will ignore it if it is written in lowercase letters.

Boolean Operators in Google • OR: Use OR just as you would in a database search. EG: “Knowledge Utilization” or “Research Utilization” will bring back every page containing “Knowledge Utilization”, every page containing “Research Utilization” and every page containing both terms. • NB: The operator OR must be written in capital letters. Google will ignore it if it is written in lowercase letters.

Boolean Operators in Google • NOT: Google uses the Boolean operator NOT. EG: “Research Utilization” NOT Estabrooks.

Sexy searching: A hot date with a database!