An Online Tutorial brought to you by

Pilgrim Library

CINAHL:

Effective Searching

Watch this tutorial if you:

Have any

questions about

using CINAHL

Need to locate

specific articles,

journals, etc.

Want to learn

how to better use

this database

Advanced search is

the default homepage

for CINAHL. It gives

you plenty of

amazing ways of

limiting your search.

Sample article record: Not every record will look the same, but this is a good example.

Complete citation information

is given, though it is not

formatted with MLA or any

other citation style.

Links to access the full text of this article are here.

These links will change depending on who is making

the article available online. You could also see a logo

for the EJC:

Check this to only

search for articles

that are available

full-text online at

the click of a

button. Check this to retrieve

only peer reviewed

articles from your

searches. Check this to only

retrieve research

articles from your

searches.

Let’s explore these options!

These options are helpful if you

are looking for a specific article

(already have the citation)

Scroll through these search limit

options! They pertain specifically

to nursing information and can

help you focus your searches.

The Search Box

When you used the advanced search, the database

automatically checks this little box. If you try to search and

the box is still checked, the database is going to act like you

entered a search under CINAHL headings. This means that

your search will not bring up actual articles – it will try to

match your keywords to the keywords the database uses.

Most of the time, you will want to UNCHECK THIS BOX

before searching!

Whether you‟re using the basic or advanced search, you can

create better searches for information and articles by using a

few simple tricks.

The rest of this tutorial is devoted to these search tips.

Remember that these are not limited to CINAHL – most

search engines or databases will allow you to use these nifty

little tricks, and they can save you substantial time!

So we recommend that you follow these steps when

searching CINAHL or in most other databases…

Start

Searching

with Purpose!

#1: Know what you want to find

Determine what types of

sources would be most helpful

Determine what specific

information would be

most useful

Books? Articles? Primary sources?

Quotations? Facts? Opinions? Statistics? Experimental data?

#2: Select good keywords

Pull the „key‟ words from your thesis or topic. These

are the ones that really capture the essence of your

subject.

Sample thesis:

Hands-on experience is the most crucially important aspect of nursing education.

“hands-on experience” “nursing education”

Sample thesis 2:

All levels of staff must cooperate for a health institution to run effectively.

“cooperation” “health institution” “staff”

“hands-on experience” “nursing education”

“staff” “cooperation”

Take your „key‟ words and come up with possible alternative keywords. Think of:

Synonyms

Broader subject terms

Ways in which your term could be narrowed.

practicum

internship

clinical hours

on-the-job experience

on-site experience

skill application

nurses

doctors administration

institution

organization

hospital company

in-hospital

rounds RN

BSN

nursing programs

Teaching nursing Nursing classes

health education

collaboration organizational

communication

department

coordination effectiveness

efficiency

sharing

teamwork support

aid

When you put a phrase into a database or search engine, normally it is searching

for those words anywhere in the article – the search engine does not realize that

those words are an item or that they are meant to be together.

For example, when I search for nursing student, I want articles about nursing

students – not articles about kindergarten students from the Pediatric Journal of

Nursing. The database doesn‟t understand that I meant nursing student to be one

search term, so it searches for the words separately.

What if you have key PHRASES instead of key WORDS?

The solution? Quotation marks!

Put quotation marks around your key phrases to tell the database that you

want it to search for the words as one entity. Remember, though, that you are

telling the database to search for what is in the quotation marks EXACTLY…

so if you put “nursing resources”, you’re not going to get back an article that

talks about a nursing resource or nurse resources.

This little trick works almost everywhere – even in Google!

#3: Make good search strings

Combine your keywords and make “search strings”

and = narrower search with fewer results

or = wider search with

more results

So let‟s say you run a search for:

“community health nursing”

You would get back all that is in the

purple circle. If you don‟t like what

that search brought back, you have

some easy ways to refine the search to

get back what you really wanted. All that has

been written about

“community health

nursing”

If you got back too many results, or if your results were not

specific enough --- add another keyword and connect your two

keywords with the word AND

“community health nursing”

“leadership”

and

If you search with AND, you‟re telling the search engine that there are two

criteria that must be met in a source. This means you‟ll get back fewer results

and all of the results should mention BOTH keywords. You‟ll only get back

the articles that fall in the middle of the venn diagram.

If you got back too few results, or if your subject is frequently

called by multiple names --- add another keyword and connect

your two keywords with the word OR

“community health nursing”

“leadership”

or

If you search with OR, you‟re telling the search engine that either one OR

the other term has to be present in a source. That gives the search more

possibilities and will bring back more results for you. You would get back

ALL of the venn diagram if you put in the connector OR.

Examples of good search strings:

“nursing education” or “nursing program”

This search will bring back articles that talk about EITHER nursing education OR nursing program or both.

This search will bring back articles that talk about nursing education AND standards.

“nursing education” and standards

JFK or “John F. Kennedy”

“Butch Cassidy” and “Sundance Kid”

This search will bring back articles that talk about JFK OR John F. Kennedy.

This search will bring back articles that talk about Butch Cassidy AND the Sundance Kid.

Try coming up with some search strings on your own! Run them

through a quick google or database search – first as a single keyword and

then as a string. You‟ll see the difference in results!

Congratulations!

You successfully finished the library tutorial

CINAHL: Effective Searching

If you have any questions about this tutorial,

please get in touch with Pilgrim Library or

email adearmond@defiance.edu.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://scrapetv.com/News/News%2520Pages/Technology/images/youtube-logo-2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://scrapetv.com/News/News%2520Pages/main%2520pages/Technology-page-2-Scrape-TV-The-World-on-your-side.html&usg=__iFbpPsY6BLjRmwM7tUJNIR19kOk=&h=345&w=487&sz=21&hl=en&start=0&sig2=GZgOzPgZ1jSdBbfHnnMvmA&tbnid=dI7uwE0TkZ9HwM:&tbnh=139&tbnw=229&ei=q_lGTPnhPInFnAf89rmFBA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dyoutube%2Blogo%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D860%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:10,100&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=149&vpy=267&dur=883&hovh=189&hovw=267&tx=184&ty=67&page=1&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0&biw=1280&bih=860;

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www3.babson.edu/Students/Graduate/Organizations/life_sciences/images/logo_facebook_1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www3.babson.edu/Students/Graduate/Organizations/life_sciences/&usg=__hyF70ge_X96dB54VRikm59yuWg4=&h=385&w=1024&sz=25&hl=en&start=0&sig2=PD0GBAZdS78Cei3HxNx-7A&tbnid=LTkRB8ED8k4OcM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=258&ei=ePtGTOP5O9LtnQfiion2CQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfacebook%2Blogo%26hl%3Den%26gbv%3D2%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D860%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=382&vpy=124&dur=5460&hovh=137&hovw=366&tx=266&ty=75&page=1&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0&biw=1280&bih=860

Click below to check out Pilgrim Library on: