Libraries Learning Commons: Practical Nursing Sources: Advanced Searching Techniques

Overview

This page is intended to help any nursing student improve their research skills. The content here provides students with awareness and familiarity with stronger competencies for assignment research, at this level.

In column 1, we have a tutorial overview on the PICO searching method.
In column 2, we have in-depth nursing collections and journals with advanced techniques for searching these collections and evaluating the results, and information about using CINAHL / MeSH subject headings while researching.

Library Search

Note: Search box does not open a new window.

Search Strategy

7 Steps to the Perfect PICO search
Evidence-Based Nursing Practice: A document that will explain PICO and how to use the strategy in your research and for assignments. Patient/Problem, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome (PICO). A document created by Kathy A. Jensen, EBSCO Health, with references inside document.

PICO tutorials

PICO in CINAHL
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Adapted from the original work "PICO:CINAHL" by UTS Library, available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 AU
PICO Resource Center
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©2023 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. All rights reserved.
PICO Search | EBSCO Databases
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Adapted from University of Akron Libraries, retrieved Aug 21, 2023: https://libguides.uakron.edu/c.php?g=1317571
PICO strategy (EBSCO)

Nursing-specific Research Collections

Find more databases from ncLibraries

ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Premium Video Titles (August 2022)

MESH and CINHAL tutorials

Pyramid Technique of Hierarchy of Evidence

When reviewing search results, you should carefully evaluate them using this technique

Meta-Analysis: A systematic review that uses quantitative methods to synthesize & summarize results.
Systematic Review: A summary of medical literature that uses explicit methods to perform a comprehensive literature search & critical appraisal of individual studies.
Randomized Controlled Trial: Participants are randomly allocated into experimental, or control groups & are followed over time for the variables/outcomes of interest.
Cohort Study: Identifies participants who currently have a certain condition or receive treatment and are followed over time & compared with another group of people who are not affected by the condition.
Case Control Study: Identifies participants who have a certain outcome (cases) & participants without that outcome (controls).
Case Report/Case Series: A report on one or more participants with a particular outcome.

CINAHL: Major Concept and Explode Techniques

Explode and Major Concept: Subject Headings
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Expert-Level Techniques

Explode

When you Explode a term, you create a search query that “explodes” the subject heading. The headings are exploded to retrieve all references indexed to that term as well as all references indexed to any narrower subject terms.

In a database with a tree, such as MeSH or CINAHL Subject Headings, exploding retrieves all documents containing any of the subject terms below the term you selected. In other databases, exploding retrieves all documents containing the selected term, as well as any of its first level of narrower terms. If a plus sign (+) appears next to a narrower or related term, there are narrower terms below it.

Major Concept

When you select Major Concept for a term, you create a search query that finds only records for which the subject heading is a major point of the article. Searches are limited with specific qualifiers (subheadings) to improve the precision of the search, and limited to major subject headings indicate the main concept of an article.

Think of this as using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) with subject headings instead of with keywords.

Research Instruments in CINAHL

Find Research Instruments in CINAHL

CINAHL is the major database of nursing and allied health information. There are multiple ways to search for research instruments in CINAHL. The most appropriate for you depends on what you want to know. When searching by the name of a research instrument, it is often most effective to use a unique term or phrase from the name of the instrument, instead of the exact name.

To find a work that is a published research instrument, search for a Publication Type of RESEARCH INSTRUMENT. This indicates the work indexed is actually a research instrument.

Search using search terms for your topic
Click Advanced Search to view search options
From the drop-down menu of Publication Types, click Research Instrument.
Click Search

To find a body of work that uses a specific research instrument, search using the particular name of the research instrument as an INSTRUMENTATION in the drop-down list.

Enter the specific name of the research instrument and
Select INSTRUMENTATION from the drop-down list of search fields
Click Search