General Tips about Finding Articles about Your Concept
- If your concept is from a discipline outside of nursing, search the appropriate subject database(s) for that discipline, such as PsycINFO for Psychology and Education Research Complete or ERIC for Education.
- If you are not sure what discipline(s) is relevant for your concept or if it is related to several disciplines, try searching multiple EBSCO databases simultaneously or the Web of Science Core Collection.
- Web of Science Core Collection searches several databases, but the most relevant for concepts are Social Sciences Citation Index and Science Citation Index-Expanded. It also includes Book Citation Index for the social sciences and sciences, but only covers back to 2005 so you may not be able to use it to find a book about your concept.
- Some databases, such as CINAHL and PsycINFO, include not just articles but books, book chapters, and dissertations, so you might consider limiting your search to peer-reviewed articles, unless you still need additional book references for your concept search.
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Note: While searching the journal literature, you are likely to run across concept analyses on your concept that other authors have already published. Be sure to check with your professor before using these existing concept analyses as sources for your paper.
Database-Specific Search Tips: CINAHL
- CINAHL This link opens in a new window
Search journal literature related to nursing and the allied health disciplines. Also contains early-release citations for pre-published journal articles.
- Start with the general search tips at the top of this page.
- You may NOT need to use research articles only for this paper, but you can select the "Peer-Reviewed" limiter to get only peer-reviewed journals. (This also eliminates theses and dissertations from the research results).
- If you have too many results from searching by keyword, it may be helpful to determine if your concept has its own CINAHL Subject Heading. If it does, you can search for your concept as a "Major Concept".
- CINAHL Subject Headings are indexing terms that subject experts assign to articles to indicate what their focus is. They serve a function similar to Twitter hash tags. If your concept has its own subject heading, searching by major subject will reduce the number of results. Instead of just looking for your concept name anywhere in the title, abstract, or keywords of articles, it will only find articles where that concept has been listed as a main topic of the article.
- Check the "Major Concept" box if you want to narrow the retrievals to articles where that subject is the main focus.
- Putting TI in front of your concept name in CINAHL tells CINAHL to search only for that word if it is in the title of the article.
- TI comfort gets articles with the word comfort in the title of the article.
Database Specific Search Tips - PubMed
- PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed provides free access to the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) premier database – MEDLINE. Content is citations and abstracts from national and international journals covering all aspects of biomedicine including allied health and other fields as they relate to medicine or healthcare.
- Start with the general search tips at the top of this page.
- Keep your PubMed search simple at first. Just type both of your concepts in the PubMed single search blank WITHOUT parentheses, quotation marks, truncation symbols, or Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). PubMed often does a good job of interpreting your search to include your search terms as both keywords and subject headings, and the default "best match" sort is supposed to list the most relevant results first.
- If you don't like the results you got from the simple search with the best match sorting option, determine if your concept has its own Medical Subject Heading (MeSH). If it does, you can search for your concept as a "MeSH Major Topic".
- Medical Subject Headings are indexing terms that subject experts assign to articles to indicate what their focus is. They serve a function similar to Twitter hash tags. If your concept has its own subject heading, searching by major subject will reduce the number of results. Instead of just looking for your concept name anywhere in the title, abstract, or keywords of articles, it will only find articles where that concept has been listed as a main topic of the article.
- This "Use MeSH to Build a Better Query" video demonstrates how to use the MeSH Database to identify and search on a subject heading for a given keyword or concept. Check the "Restrict to MeSH Major Topic" box if you want to reduce the retrievals to articles where that subject is the main focus (or change [Mesh] to [Majr] in your search strategy.
- [ti] (including the square brackets) immediately after your concept with no space in between searches for your concept in the article title.
- Comfort[ti] searches for articles with the word comfort in the title of the article.
Database-Specific Search Tips - PsycINFO
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Indexes psychology literature and related disciplines including psychiatry, medicine, nursing, pharmacology, cognitive science, and linguistics. Includes journals and book chapters. Use Historic PsycINFO to identify literature published as early as the 1920s. Links occur to full-text when available.
- Start with the general search tips at the top of this page.
- Use the "Peer-reviewed Article limiter".
- You can limit your results by research methodology type in PsycINFO, but it is probably not necessary to get that specific when searching for your concept. You may not be required to use only research articles for this paper, but if you are, make sure that your articles have a methods section
- PsycINFO has its own subject headings (thesaurus), and there may be a subject heading for your concept. If your concept is available as a subject heading, you may want to select the "Major Concept" option for that term.
- Video demonstration from the American Psychological Association of how to use the PsycINFO Thesaurus.
- DE "Mental Health" finds articles where the term mental health has been assigned as an indexing term/subject of the article.
- MM "Mental Health" is more specific. It still finds articles where "mental health" is a indexing term/subject of the article, but it must be a heavily weighted, major concept in the article. Subjects searched as MM retrieve fewer results than when they are searched with DE.
- Video demonstration from the American Psychological Association of how to use the PsycINFO Thesaurus.
- As an EBSCO database, PsycINFO's interface has many similarities to that of CINAHL. One is:
- TI "mental health" retrieves articles where the phrase mental health is in the title of the article. Enclosing the words in quotes ensures that they will be searched as an exact phrase.
