Information Skills for Health

Hopefully by now you do! This is the final post in this SearchSmart series. We’ve covered quite a bit of ground. You’ll find all the posts together using the hashtag SearchSmart . If you want a quick reminder of what is involved in literature searching, the take our Literature Searching Flashcards Revision etutorial, or watch our short video: If you want to make any comment about this series you can do so using the comments options at the bottom of the post.

We provide you with lots of opportunities to develop your literature searching skills. Book Collection You can look for items within the library by using Library Search . The following shelf-marks will be particularly useful – LB2369.O6, R118.6 and RT81.5. Information Skills for Health Blog Our Information Skills blog provides posts about resources and how to use them. You can sign-up to receive email updates in your inbox when new content is added. Online Guides and Support Most of our main resources have their own help page in the Online Guides and Support section of the website . Here you will find links to etutorials, guides, videos etc to help you to the most out of the resources we have. Online eTutorials We have developed a number of online etutorials to help you to get started with our main resources and develop your information skills . Training Programme You can book onto one of our scheduled training sessions to develop your skills...

Don’t forget that you can check your literature searching skills at any time by taking our Check Your Skills etutorial. Complete the quiz to learn about the skills you have, then check on the action plan what you can do to improve them. Screen-shot of the Check Your Skills etutorial

If you are carrying out your project over a period of time, you might want to make sure that you are kept up-to-date with any new articles or published research that matches your search criteria and will be relevant to your topic. There are a wide range of tools that can help you to keep up-to-date: Bulletins – these can be useful for topic-specific latest research. Check whether any exist within the area you are interested in. TOCs or Table of Contents – many journals allow you to sign-up to receive their TOC or Table of Content. You will need to identify the key journals which publish articles in your topic area. When a new issue is published you will be notified of the contents and you can check whether there are any new articles on your topic. Database Alerts – many healthcare-specific databases allow you to set an alert on your saved search strategy. Thus when new content is added to the database and it matches your search criteria, you will be notified and can check wh...

Searching is a cyclical process. As you execute your search and assess your results you may find new keywords or thesaurus terms. You may come across an aspect of your subject that you weren’t aware of. You can refine – add more search terms or filters – and repeat your search to include new terms or topics. Though remember to still focus on what will answer your question and don’t get distracted. Icon of cyclical arrows to represent the literature searching process

Referencing is an important element to using information. A reference management tool can help you to keep track of the articles that you find as well as help when it comes to creating your bibliography and reference list. Keele University students have access to the reference management tool RefWorks. The Health Library offers a training course so that you can learn how to use it. Image listing the features of the RefWorks training - Reference list, import, edit, hands-on practice You can book online or contact the training librarians to reserve your place.

Yes! Once you have run your literature search, selected the articles you need and created your own work (assignment, dissertation, research project) you should acknowledge the work of others you have used. So you need to understand what referencing is and how to use it. Take our etutorial Introduction to Referencing and Plagiarism to learn more about referencing. Articles icon to demonstrate importance of referencing information sources

The Health Library runs 2 critical appraisal training sessions as part of its scheduled programme. One session looks at a qualitative research paper and the other at a randomised controlled trial research paper. One of the training librarians will take you through the critical appraisal of the paper. There will be opportunity to discuss the papers selected and ask questions. Features of the critical appraisal course You can book online or contact the training librarians to reserve your place.

The evidence hierarchy lists various study types according to the quality of evidence that they produce. Study types expected to deliver good quality, reliable, applicable research are at the top of the pyramid. Different study types can be used to research different types of problems. Study types have key characteristics that define them. These characteristics may affect the quality of the study such as whether the study is prone to bias or how accurate the results will be. These are things to consider when you are deciding to include a paper as part of your evidence. Image showing the Evidence Hierarchy pyramid - with case reports at the bottom and systematic reviews at the top; the quality of evidence increases up the pyramid As we have seen with our other evaluation tools, it is not about deciding whether a paper is good or poor but whether it is good, reliable and appropriate to answer your question. Learn more about the Evidence Hierarchy and study types by comple...

When you are looking at research articles you need to appraise them critically for validity, results and relevance. This means looking at the paper in a systematic way to determine whether it is going to help you to answer your question. There are a wide range of tools that can help you to develop your skills in doing this. Our etutorial Critical Appraisal Tools will introduce you to some tools that can help. The tools do not necessarily give you a definitive “yes” or “no” but they help you to ask the right questions to assess the paper. Tools icon - use critical appraisal tools to help you to assess research papers In a similar way that we use the CRAAP tool (see previous blog post) if an item fails your appraisal it does not necessarily mean that it is a rubbish paper, just that it will not help you to answer your question.

Once you have found some information resources you need to check whether they are going to help answer your question. The CRAAP test is a tool to help you to remember what to check for when you are deciding whether to use the information source that you have found. It covers the basics that you need to think about. Summary of the CRAAP checklist - currency, relevancy, authority, accuracy and purpose When you use the CRAAP test you should check the resource you are evaluating for: Currency – is the resource you are looking at recent? Does it contain up-to-date information? Relevancy – is the information relevant to your question. Don’t waste your time looking at irrelevant information Authority – can you tell who has written the information? Who is the publisher or author? Are they qualified on this topic? Accuracy – is the information accurate? Does the argument flow logically? Are there references that you can validate? Purpose – what is the key purpose of the resource?...

Have you been following the Search Smart series ? How are you getting on? So far we have looked at: Defining your question and breaking it down into constituent parts Identifying your keywords Using database tools such as wildcards and truncation to increase your searching How to combine the different elements of your search using OR, AND and NOT The benefits of using a thesaurus How to focus your search using filters Why you should consider saving your search strategy Where you can find full-text articles We’ve given you lots of etutorials that you can try to help you develop your skills; and don’t forget that we have training sessions that you can book if you want extra help from our training librarians. Take a moment to reflect on what you have learnt so far. You can try our Check Your Skills etutoria l to check how much you are improving your skills. Check Your Skills to see if you are improving

If you want more help developing your own search strategy and applying it to our databases, then book on one of our training courses. We have training courses that will help you to get to grips with either Keele resources or NHS-based resources . You will get support from one of our qualified librarians and courses include plenty of opportunity for hands-on practice. Key features of Literature Search Training - databases, search plan, full-text access and hands-on practice Book online or contact the training team .

Once you have completed your search and got your list of results, you need to find the full-text of the article in order to determine whether it is suitable to answer your question. Use Library Resources to find full-text articles The library has a wealth of online resources. By using library databases, you’ll often get a link automatically to the full-text article if it is available from our subscriptions. Or you can check our online collections to see if the subscription is covered elsewhere. We have a range of tutorials that can help you to find full-text articles: What is an Article? - learn how to recognise and find academic articles Find Articles for a Project - learn the steps you need to follow to find articles for your projects Find an Article from a Reference - learn how to find the full-text of an article when you have a reference Finding Keele eJournals  - learn how to find a Keele ejournal and access full-text articles Finding NHS eJournals ...

Many healthcare-specialist databases will allow you to save your search strategy ie your keywords and how you have combined them, along with your search results. This means that you can re-run your search. This is particularly helpful if you are completing a project over a period of time – you can re-run your search to pick up new items. It also allows you to tweak your search if you come across extra search terms – you can add them into your existing search rather than starting all over again. By saving your search results you will keep a record of the items you have used for your assignment, dissertation or research project. Use the Save options in healthcare databases to save your search strategy and search results You can learn more about the databases we offer you by going to the Online Guides and Support section of our website .

Many databases allow you to use filters to focus your search even more. Typically filters are located on the left-hand-side of the web page presenting your search results. You’ll often be able to filter your search results by selecting a specific publication date range or type of publication. Specialist healthcare databases will often also allow you to filter by patient characteristics such as age or gender. Use Filters to focus your search results Complete our etutorial Introduction to Literature Searching to learn more about when and how to filter your search results.

A thesaurus is a defined list of related terms used to describe content eg articles. In databases, articles are often “tagged” with a thesaurus term. You can search for the thesaurus term. The same thesaurus term will be used consistently across articles; thus even though the authors may have used different terms in their articles, the thesaurus term will be the same. By searching for a thesaurus term you should find articles on the same topic, even though the authors may have used different keywords or concept words. Icons of articles with some highlighted with a tag indicating they have the same thesaurus term You can learn more about the thesaurus in the Cinahl database by completing our etutorial Using a Thesaurus .

Many of our databases allow you to use advanced searching techniques to combine searches. This way you can build up the searches for your keywords using OR and then combine the different concepts using AND and NOT. Graphic listing several concepts leading to one set of results For example: Your first search for your first concept may include all your different keywords and phrases for kidney disease, using OR to combine them. Your next search might be for your second concept hypertension – you’ll need to identify all the relevant terms for hypertension and combine them using OR. You can then combine both these concepts using AND for example as search1 AND search2. You can learn more about how to combine searches by completing our etutorial Develop Your Search Skills

Some resources will allow you to combine your keywords in different ways. One of those ways is to combine terms using the word “not”. Venn diagram demonstrating exclusion of one search term You use NOT to exclude a specific term from your search results. For example you may be looking for “kidney disease” but you don’t want any search results relating to hypertension. By searching for “kidney disease” NOT hypertension you will exclude all the items with the search term hypertension. You can learn more about how to combine search terms by completing our etutorial Develop Your Search Skills .

Some resources will allow you to combine your keywords in different ways. One of those ways is to combine terms using the word “and”. Venn diagram showing intersection where 2 search terms overlap You use AND to combine different concepts that mean different things. This helps you to narrow your search helping it to be more specific. For example you may be looking for “kidney disease” but only in relation to hypertension. By searching for “kidney disease” AND hypertension you are narrowing your search about kidney disease to only include items which also include the search term hypertension. Here’s a short animation from HEE explaining the use of AND: You can learn more about how to combine search terms by completing our etutorial Develop Your Search Skills .