Background Research
Research to find needed information to understand and plan scholarly research.
This is the research on the medical terms for each condition; what each condition is in general; etc.
Scholarly Research
Research to explore the full topic. This will likely use a variety of search methods.
Ex: Cardiovascular disease and socioeconomic status; pulmonary disease and race/ethnicity
Use Subject Headings or the medical/technical term rather than natural language:
Natural Language: heart disease, heart attack
Medical Term: cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction
Natural Language: stroke
Medical Term: cerebrovascular accident, transient ischemic attack
Natural Language: lung disease
Medical Term: pulmonary disease
**Most databases have a thesaurus to help you find what terms that database uses. You can also use a medical dictionary.**
Also consider using search terms specific to a disease. There are many types of cancers and many types of heart disease.
| Keywords | Subject Headings |
|---|---|
| Natural language words | Controlled vocabulary, sometimes jargon |
| Good for obscure or new topics | Good for general and established topics |
| Can generate irrelevant results | Usually generates highly relevant results |
| Need to think of all variations or alternatives | Need to know the correct term |
| Quick and flexible way to start research | Less flexible, not always appropriate |
| Searches several fields (title, abstract, subject headings, etc.) | Searches Subject Heading field only |
Boolean Operators help you define the set of results you want the database to show you.
AND — displays results that have both the terms searched for. This is a narrower search.
Example: If you have 15 items (5 cat, 5 dog, 5 cat & dog), a search for cat AND dog will bring up results for books and articles that have both "cat" and "dog" in them: 5 results.
OR — displays results that have at least one of the terms searched for. This is a broader search.
Example: If you have 15 items (5 cat, 5 dog, 5 cat and dog), a search for cat OR dog will bring up results for books and articles that have either "cat" or "dog" in them: 15 results.
NOT — a way of excluding something. The term that comes after NOT is excluded. This is a narrower search.
Example: If you have 15 items (5 cat, 5 dog, 5 cat and dog), a search for cat NOT dog will bring up results for books and articles that have "cat" in them but excludes results that have "dog" in them: 5 results.
Use quotation marks (" ") around short phrases. This forces the database to search for that exact phrase, not all the words in any place or in any combination
"cardiovascular disease": 1,816,595 results
cardiovascular disease: 3,077,839 results
The default is for the search to look in "any field." This is great for a beginning, broad search but less helpful for specific searching.
Using Advanced Search, you can select which "field" you want to search:
