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Skills Team Workshops: Finding quality journal articles for health sciences

Finding quality journal articles for health sciences

Health sciences and in particular nursing, require a very systematic way of searching. These videos offer additional support for search tips and techniques and specifically for cross-searching EBSCOhost databases such as CINAHL, Medline and PsycInfo. 

Workshop description

Struggling to find those quality journal articles that you need for your literature review/dissertation?

This workshop will enable you to learn tips and techniques to enable you to find good quality journal articles using health databases via EBSCOhost.

The workshop will provide an opportunity to develop the essential search techniques that you will need to perform your searches effectively, providing the necessary skills to find quality journal articles.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

  • Identify key search terms and discover smart ways to search
  • Effectively look for quality journal articles using EBSCOhost databases
  • Conduct an advanced search using appropriate techniques
  • Limit and filter searches accordingly to narrow or broaden results
  • Save your searches and save articles into folders (with reference to PRISMA)
  • Cross search databases and remove duplicates
  • Effective tips for screening through results

Who this workshop is for

Ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students who need to conduct an advanced literature search. Students from Health Sciences will find this particular useful as it demonstrates searching CINAHL, Medline and PsycInfo. Although searches use an example from nursing, the techniques can applied to midwifery, clinical psychology, physiotherapy, dementia, sport sciences and biomedical sciences. 

Facilitator

This workshop is run by an Academic & Library Specialist from the Brynmor Jones Library Skills Team.

 

Workshop outline

Work your way through the videos in the order provided then try the suggested activities beneath each one.

Video 1: Health sciences: Effective search tips for finding quality journal articles

Activity: After watching the video think about your own research topic and what key terms you will use to search with. Also consider if you can apply the search techniques to your own terms such as truncation, phrase searching and alternative terms.

Video 2: Health Sciences: Inputting your search terms on EBSCOhost databases

Activity: After watching the video use the EBSCOhost databases to try searching for your own topic area using the terms you identified from the activity in video 1.

Video 3: Health Sciences: Personal account features on EBSCOhost databases

Activity: After watching the video set up your own EBSCOhost account and try saving articles into folders and saving your search strategy.