Research Guides: Public Health -BHS: Articles on your topic

DATABASES FOR PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH

MEDLINE This link opens in a new window
MEDLINE, produced by the National Library of Medicine, is an important health science database covering, medicine, dentistry, and nursing. The resource uses Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) which allow for specific, focused searching. This version contains over 1,400 full text journals and is updated daily. View tutorial:
PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises more than 27 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
CINAHL Ultimate This link opens in a new window
CINAHL® Ultimate is the primary resource for the fields of nursing, allied health and occupational therapy. It includes: Evidence-Based Care Sheets, index/abstracts, full text articles, legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials. The database, CINAHL, is the core resource of this product.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Provides access to journal articles and other materials in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related fields. Coverage 1800s to present.

LGBTQ+ Rights Collection
This collection is rounded out by a curated list of Scholarly Articles selected by Hein editors, as well as a Bibliography of titles to launch your research outside of HeinOnline. Finally, an interactive timeline, incorporating documents from HeinOnline with other media from around the internet, plots out an overview of LGBTQ rights in America from 1950 to the present day, helping to demonstrate the relevancy of the content within the database to the real-world events to which they are connected.

Throughout the LGBTQ+ Rights database, users may encounter items and viewpoints that they find offensive. These items are included in order to properly foster dialogue and to fully understand both the progress our society has made and the inequalities that still exist today. For all the triumphs and hard-fought victories of the gay rights movement, LGBTQ individuals today still face barriers to living openly without discrimination, both in the United States and around the world.

BRAINSTORMING A TOPIC

What do you already know about the topic?

Who is this research for?

Who does this research benefit?

Who cares about your topic?

Who cares about your will help you figure out what type of research they do. (scientists will perform experiments, doctors may run a randomized controlled trial, a professor might write a literature review, etc)
Once you figure the type of resources someone who cares about your topic would create, you can then determine where you will find these resources. (scholarly articles can be found in databases, news articles can be found online, etc)

How is your topic portrayed in the media?

Is this a hot-button issue that folks have very differing opinions about?
Has your topic been unfairly criticized or wrongly portrayed in the media?

Who has access to information about your topic?

How do everyday folks know about it? Are they getting their information solely based on mass media?
Misinformation and fake news are symptoms of a lack of access to quality information. (Think of this as an information desert)

What gaps have you noticed in the research? What's missing? Who's missing?

This is where your research question can start. How can you address the gap?

KEYWORD SEARCH STRATEGIES

Brainstorming Keywords

Start by by thinking about the main ideas that are related to your topic. The PICO format (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) can help you think about these concepts.

Consider using synonyms of your keywords to help find even more information. For example, if you are looking for articles about the benefits of exercise for patients with heart disease, you might start with the keywords and synonyms below:

Keyword	Synonym 1	Synonym 2
heart disease	cardiovascular disease
exercise	fitness	physical activity

Searching for Keywords

Creating a grid like the one above can also help you enter your keywords when you're searching in the databases.

Try Boolean Operators...

"Or" broadens your search results. (Citrus OR Oranges OR Lemons OR Tangerines OR Grapefruit)
"And" narrows your search results. (Rainfall AND Deforestation AND Brazil)
"Not" narrows your search results. (Wound healing NOT Plants) (Social media NOT Facebook)
"Not" can be used to weed out biased words or phrases associated with your topic. (immigrants NOT illegal aliens)
Combine operators for more complex searching. (Coastal sage scrub AND fire OR Postfire OR Postburn)

Truncation...

Broadens your search
Enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end.
The database will return results that include any ending of that root word. (teen* = teens, teenager, teenagers, teenaged. environment* = environments, environmental, environmentalist)

Wildcards...

Broadens your search.
Use if a word can be spelled several different ways but has the same meaning.
Wom*n = women, woman, col*r = color, colour

One way to keep track of your research results is to use a research log. This way you will remember where you searched, the keywords you used, and how many results you got.

Research Log