Clinical Research

Use boolean operators to make your search more effective.

AND finds records with all of your terms/keywords and narrows your search (cannabis AND anxiety).

OR finds records with any of the terms and broadens your search (youth OR teen OR adolescent).

Truncation finds records with a term's various endings (nurs* = nurse, nursing, nursed, nurses, nursing's).

Quotation marks find phrases instead of individual words ("cardiac arrest").

I have too many results! Don't make me read all this!

• Revise your research question to make it more specific, for example add a setting or population
• Focus your search by using AND to add additional search terms, or use "quotation marks" to search for phrases
• Limit your search to the title, or title and abstract only
• Add limits such as publication date or type of publication
• Use database-specific subject headings.

I am not finding anything!

• Revise your research question and check it is not too specific
• Expand your search by using OR to add synonyms for your search terms
• Include different spellings (paediatric, pediatric) and both scientific and popular names (cannabis, marijuana)
• Search using both subject headings and keywords

I've got three great articles, but nothing else!

• Use the database or Google Scholar to find cited by and related articles
• Check the reference lists of your great articles for other relevant articles
• Check the subject headings on your great articles and search using them.