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Nursing

Database Search Strategies

Strategy How to Things to Know
Keyword Choose the most important words or short phrases from your research question. Combine keywords using Booleans for more targeted searches. Keyword searches are more flexible, but also tend to be broader than other search methods.
Subject Heading Use a database's built-in (controlled) vocabulary to perform a targeted search. Results tend to be more relevant, but are fewer than a keyword search. Databases may use different controlled vocabularies making subject heading difficult to use across platforms. Vocabularies include:
  • MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)
  • Library of Congress
  • CINAHL
Boolean

Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT are used in databases to make logical relationships between keywords.

  • AND combines concepts and narrows your search
  • OR connects similar concepts and expands your search
  • NOT removes concepts based on a keyword and narrows your search.
 Most databases assume you want to search using AND, meaning you don't have to type it in the search box.
Nesting (using Booleans)

Nesting makes use of parentheses to group related concepts that can be combined using Boolean operators.

Ex: (dementia OR "Alzheimer's disease") AND ("fall prevention" OR "fall risk assessment") 

 Nesting can make searches more efficient, but be careful not to make the search overly complicated to the point that you get too many or unrelated results.
Truncation

Use an asterisk * at the end of a word to search multiple endings of that word.

Ex: teen* = teens, teenage, teenager, teenaged

 The asterisk can replace up to 20 characters, but be mindful that it may broaden your results too much if the stem is ambiguous.
Limiting (Filtering)

Databases provide built-in filters that can limit the amount of information returned by a search.

Typical limiters include publication date, type of resource, full-text, population age, gender, methodology.

 Options for limiting or filtering are typically found on the left side of the results screen or under the search boxes on the initial advanced search screen.

 

Citation Searching

If you get stuck, try these citation searching techniques to find more resources.

Backwards searching

Once you find a relevant article or book, use their reference list to see if there are any resources that may help you.

  • You can copy/paste the title of the work into the Discovery search on the library homepage to see if we can get access to the resource for you.

Forwards searching

You can find out if your article or book has been cited by others by pasting the title into one of the following search tools:

  1. Google Scholar: Click on the Cited by link under the item summary to see articles that have listed your resource in their citations.
  2. Web of Science: Click on the Citations link to the right of the article title to see a list of article indexed in Web of Science that have cited your article.
  3. ResearchGate: After searching, click on the article title, then click on the Citations link in the menu above the article description. NOTE: ResearchGate is a networking/social sharing site where authors can upload their publications. The copy of the article you read on this site may not be the same as what was originally published.
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