Advanced Literature Searching For Health

You've Finished Module 2

Now that you have finished module 2, make sure you can:

• Break your topic or question into concepts (2.1)
• Decide which concepts to use in your search (2.2)
• Think up synonyms to describe each of your concepts (2.4)
• Understand the purpose and role of subject headings in your search, and how you would find them (2.6, 2.7)
• Use boolean operators to combine each of your terms (2.8)
• Constructed a concept table, where each column is a concept of your research question, to guide your database searching (2.7, 2.8)

Looking for more?

If you would like more practice or are keen to learn more, check out these resources:

• Deakin University Library (Advanced Search Health) - this page covers breaking your question in further detail, what to do with "split concepts" and contains activities and videos to help you ground your understanding.  
• Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (Chapter 4) - this chapter covers some of the theory behind creating a comprehensive search strategy.

Let's move onto Module 3, and learn how to input a search for these databases.