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Why are search skills important?
For students
• Search skills help you find good quality research articles • Saves you time and effort• Underpins all your assignments and research
For practitioners
• All the protocols and guidelines used in healthcare are based on evidence
• You will need search skills to be able to stay up-to-date with the latest research
• Search skills are important in your CPD
Topic or research question
Search planSources
Search words
Search results
Review and refineEvaluate and record
The literature search cycle
Systematic searching
Searching for a systematic literature review should be:
• Systematic, rigorous, objective and unbiased
• More structured than normal searching
• Auditable, transparent and repeatable
• Comprehensive - including standard databases, other specialist journals, guidelines, SLRS stc.
Tips for getting started
1. Do not choose your articles until you have conducted a systematic search - choosing articles first and then constructing a retrospective search strategy is very difficult.
2. Pre-searching your topic may help you develop it into a full research question.
3. A fully developed research question may require revision as your search develops.
Advanced literature search kit
Bite-sized help to guide you through the literature review
process
• Links to previous dissertations
• UCS thesaurus of nursing and health search terms
• Links to sample systematic searches using Cinahl and BNI
• PEO and PICO help
• Help finding full-text
Planning your search
Selecting appropriate search terms is the key to successful
literature searching.
Without meaningful search terms you are unlikely to find
useful articles. Rubbish in = rubbish out.
Keep things simple - do over complicate your search withunnecessary search words.
Defining your search words
Avoid the use of vague words and phases e.g.
• the role of • the impact of• the affect on• problems with• the implications of • the link between
These terms are superfluous and not normally helpfulin searching.
Defining your search words
Identify the key concepts or main ideas in your topic or researchquestion. Select words or phrases that describe these.
Research Question
Impacting on the nurse-patient relationship in the context of involuntary admission in an acute mental health setting
Defining your search words
Identify the key concepts or main ideas in your topic or research
question. Select words or phrases that describe these.
Research Question
Impacting on the nurse-patient relationship in the
context of involuntary admission in an acute mental health
setting.
Finding other search terms
For each concept try to think of as many similar or related words as possible e.g. for diet you could also use the following:
Nutrition
Food
Nourishment
Meals
Malnutrition
Malnourishment
Tip! Try using an online thesaurus.
Synonyms and related words
To search comprehensively, you should use various types of search terms e.g.
Synonyms (similar words)
e.g. for head also use skull or cranial
for compassion also use empathy
for anxiety also use stress
Antonyms (opposite words)
e.g. for success also use failure
for nutrition also use malnutrition
Alternative search words
Acronyms and abbreviations e.g. use CT for computed tomography
use QOL for quality of life
Alternative spellingse.g. use anemia or anaemia
use pediatrics or paediatrics
Broader & narrower terms e.g. use depression for mental health e.g. use education for teaching
Boolean operators
Boolean operators are very useful for broadening or narrowing your search results:
AND narrows - finds all words
OR broadens - finds any word
NOT narrows - excludes a word
TIP! use AND NOT in Science Direct
Tip! It is good practice to use upper case for Boolean operators although this is not essential for every database.
Boolean - ANDAND narrows your search results by finding only those articles containing ALL words.
AND is usually used to link different concepts together.
woundNursingCancerBoth
words
Cancer AND Nursing
Boolean - OR
OR is the most commonly used operator and finds articles containing ONE or MORE terms.
OR is usually used to link similar concepts together.
OncologyCancer
Cancer OR Oncology
Bothwords
Boolean - NOTNOT is a useful way of excluding any unwanted search terms.
Here NOT finds articles about CANCER but not LUNG.
Cancer NOT Lung
Canceronly
Lung only
Both
Truncation
* Searches for alternative word endings to increase your search results:
Nurs* finds: Nurse, nurses, nursing
Child* finds: Child, children, childhood, childbirth
Radiograph* finds: Radiographer, radiographers, radiography
Manag* finds: Manager, management, managing
Midwi* finds: Midwife, midwives, midwifery
Phrase searching
There are several ways to search for phrases:
Pain management
May not find words as a fixed string - words may become dissociated from each other and appear within different parts of the citation. Therefore, not all articles found may be relevant.
Pain N2 management
Finds “pain” within two words of “management” - it could also find “management of severe pain” as word order is disregarded.
“Pain management”
Finds this phrase only as a fixed string which can be limiting.
Proximity (NEAR) operator
These operators find search terms within a specified number of words from each other (word order is disregarded).
Cinahl nurs* N2 educat*
Proquest nurs* N/2 educat*
ScienceDirect nurs* W/2 educat*
These searches would find any of the following phrases: • Education for nursing • Educating public health nurses
• Nursing education • Education for professional nursing
Other search tips
• Use advanced search for the best search options
• Do not limit search results to full-text
• Adapt your search strategy according to the database e.g. Cochrane
• Reference searching - searching the reference list of one relevant article to find other related articles
A-Z of e-Journals• Helps navigate to an alternative collection to locate full-text
• Identifies specialist journals not included in standard databases - the equivalent of “hand searching”
Refine your search results
Limit your search results using the refine options offered by the database.
Refine options may include:
• Year of publication
• Academic or peer-reviewed journals
• Articles in selected journals
• Primary research studies (TIP! SLRs are secondary sources)
Evaluate your search results
Check if your search plan needs revising to improve your results:
• Do the results look relevant? Do you need to remove or add any extra search terms?
• Do you need to tweak your use of search techniques e.g. Boolean operators, truncation or proximity operators?
• Are there any more appropriate databases or other sources you could be searching?
Make your final selection of articles
Scan your refined search results for titles of interest, examine the abstracts and judge whether the articles match your inclusion and exclusion criteria:
• Do the papers relate to the UK or, if not, are they applicable anyway?
• Do the papers have the appropriate research methodology and design?
• Do the settings, population, interventions/exposure and outcomes match your specified criteria?
Present your search results
• It is good practice to present your search results in the form of a table or matrix.
• This makes it much easier for you to describe exactly how you conducted your search.
• It also serves as an audit trail enabling others to replicate the process and see how you arrived at your results.
• A matrix helps you to repeat the same search at a later date if
necessary.
Finding full-text
If the article is not immediately available try the following:
•Use the 360 link if using a Proquest database
•Check the A-Z of e-journals
•Google the title of the article - it maybe freely available
•Your RCN membership may give access full-text
•Your Athens login may give access to the journal you require
•If all else fails you can request the article
Resource requestsJournal article requests need a signature and must be returned to the Library in person or by post (they cannot be scanned and emailed)
•Allow up to 2 working days for documents to be electronically delivered.
•Allowances may be exceeded if students wish to pay personally:
• First year undergraduate (Level 4) - 5 requests free of charge (request forms must be countersigned by course tutor)
• Second year undergraduate (Level 5) - 5 requests free of charge• Final year undergraduate (Level 6) - 10 requests free of charge• Taught Postgraduate - 10 requests free of charge• Research postgraduate - 20 requests free of charge• Staff - 20 requests free of charge
Top tips• Do not select articles before you have completed a systematic search
• Your PEO/PICO descriptor strings may need re-organising in your search strategy
• The database will not select your final articles
• Google article title for full-text before placing a request
• Do not just choose articles that support your argument or that are one type of research design
• Do not limit to articles about the UK – usually this is not helpful