HSCI 4204 (Kethireddy) - Research Methods and Evaluation in Public Health: Access Research Databases and Published Articles

TO FIND ARTICLES OR BOOKS IN THE

RECOMMENDED DATABASES

Use quotation marks around multiple word phrases to search those words, in that order, as one unit.  NOTE: single keywords do not need quotation marks.

Examples: "public health" also "public health administration".

Use the truncation symbol (*) to search all different endings of a word at once. wellness

Examples: "promot* wellness" will retrieve both "promote wellness" and "promoting wellness".

Use words or phrases that are spelled differently, but mean the same thing.

Examples: health also wellness.

MORE HELP WITH KEYWORD SEARCH STRATEGIES

The library's databases have built-in options and features that will assist you in limiting your research to scholarly journal articles, but being able to recognize what you are looking at is very useful.  A scholarly journal article will have:

• An abstract, a summary of the article.
• An introduction that describes what was studied and why it was studied.  The hypothesis that was tested.  Also, details of the methodology used--how the topic was studied according to scientific methods.
• Results, which may include data.
• Conclusions, which may be drawn from the results.  May also be labeled as discussion or significance.
• Bibliography or list of references, usually quite lengthy, with complete citations to everything the authors read before conducting their study.

     The video tutorials below highlight just two of the Pfau Library's more than 150 databases you can use to find scholarly journal articles, however, although some details will vary, the basic strategies are the same for any database.

Direct Link: Find Articles the Easy Way

Direct Link: Find Articles in a Database.

When searching a recommended database for scholarly journal articles, add additional keywords to the strategies above in order to narrow your results.

Examples:

• "public health" women
• "public health administration" staff
• health education children
• landfill sludge treatment

HELP FOR NARROWING A TOPIC AND FINDING FULL TEXT

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