While your first stop might be PubMed@Belmont, you may want to search other subject databases, depending on your research question. Some popular databases you might choose include:
The definitive resource for nursing and allied health research, providing full text for more than 900 journals. It covers more than 50 nursing specialties and includes quick lessons, evidence-based care sheets, CEU modules and research instruments
We subscribe to many subject databases from one company, Ebsco, and they are cross-searchable on the same Ebsco platform. These include CINAHL, Medline, Pych Info & PsycArticles, and more. When you access any of these databases, you can add additional databases to the search by clicking Choose Databases, as shown below.
Then, you can select the subject database appropriate for your question. In the example shown below, I have selected Medline, CINAHL, and three psychology databases.
At this point, you should have further developed your original topic idea into a working research question. You will still likely revise the question as you search, read, and learn more about the topic, and using a question framework will help you build your search.
The sample topic introduced previously, peer review and medical students, has now been formatted into the PICO question framework:
Does peer review training (I) for undergraduate medical students (P) improve academic performance (O)?
The main concepts from the question can now be broken down for your search. Brainstorm keywords for each concept, thinking of synonyms and related terms that you may want to search. Your knowledge of keywords may be limited at this point, so this is just a starting place for your search.
| P (Patient/Population/Problem) |
Medical students
Undergraduate medical education |
| I (Intervention/Issue/Exposure) |
Peer review
training education |
| C (Comparison) | |
| O (Outcome) |
academic performance grades |
Controlled Vocabulary
It will be very important that you identify the preferred terms from the database you are searching, or the 'controlled vocabulary' in order to expand and improve your search.
When viewing articles from your initial results, look for the subject terms attached to each. For example, in PubMed you will find a list of MeSH terms for most articles, like this:
You can also browse the MeSH database for terms:
Documenting the search will help you:
Documenting your search is crucial for systematic reviews, but it can also be helpful for traditional (narrative) reviews because it will help you stay organized.
Document the search using a search template, as shown below. These can be adapted to fit your needs.
Once you have a number of search terms to work with, you can try different combinations using Boolean operators.
