H342: Community Health Education
Business/SPEA Information Commons
Monday-Thursday: 7:30 a.m. to Midnight
Friday: 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Saturday: 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Sunday: 11:00 a.m. to Midnight
Need Research or Library Help?
E-mail: Christina Sheley: cmwilkin@indiana.edu or Melanie Groth: mgroth@indiana.edu
Chat: Enter a question in the chat box below for immediate help (available until midnight).
What is a Literature Review & Search?
The purpose of a literature review is to gather information about a particular topic from many different but relevant sources. A comprehensive and systematic literature search is a fundamental aspect of the review process. It uncovers all relevant knowledge and research methods related to a topic or research question (McCabe & Timmins, How to Conduct an Effective Literature Search).
Steps for an article-based literature search:
Finding relevant and high quality articles for your particular research question requires the following steps.
Define a Topic
An information need originates with a subject, is then narrowed to a research topic, and finally is turned into a research question. A specific research question will help you avoid unneccessary searching and yield more focused, usable results.
Subject: Childhood obesity
Research Topic: Childhood obesity and effects
Research Question: What are the long-term health effects of childhood obesity?
Subject: Childhood obesity
Research Topic: Childhood obesity and school nutrition programs
Research Question: What component(s) of a school nutrition program (quality food choices in vending machines, healthier lunch options, portion education, etc.) are the most effective in reducing obesity rates?
In some cases, you may not have enough background information about your topic to form a specific research question. The following resources can provide general/background information for a variety of topics.
|
Health Reference Center Academic Health Reference Center Academic includes indexing for 165 medical journals and consumer health magazines, with full-text of more than 110 of these titles, 500 health pamphlets, and health-related articles from more than 1500 general interest periodicals. |
|
International Encyclopedia of Public Health The International Encyclopedia of Public Health is a guide to the major issues, challenges, methods, and approaches of global public health. This encyclopedia will cover all dimensions of the field, from details of specific diseases to the organization of social insurance agencies. |
|
MedlinePlus brings together authoritative information from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organizations to provide consumer health information. |
Identify a Search Strategy
Before diving in to library databases or the Internet, spend some time analzying your research question. What are the key concepts or big ideas that make up the topic? What are relevant synonyms and broader and/or narrower terms for each of these concepts? Use the answers to these questions to generate a list of keywords that can be used to search.
| Key Concepts: | childhood obesity | health effects |
| Synonyms: | overweight children | health |
| Broader: | obesity | medicine |
| Narrower: | eating habits | cardiovascular fitness |
| Related: | nutrition disorders | well-being |
Some library databases use a controlled vocabulary to help access informaton. Controlled vocabularies map variations in terminology to a single "approved" word or phrase that demonstrates a hierarchical relationship. MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is the controlled vocabulary thesaurus used to index articles for MEDLINE and PubMed.
Determine Appropriate Sources
Below are selected databases by topic that will be helpful for the assignments in this class. Additional resources can be found using OneSearch@IU or the Health Administration and Public Health Research Guides.
General:
|
Academic Search is a multi-disciplinary database that provides full-text for more than 4,500 journals including full-text for more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. |
|
The JSTOR Health and General Science Archive collection features over 25 important historical scientific journals and top publications in the health sciences, offering published scientific research dating as far back as 1665. |
Health/Medical:
|
Alt-Health Watch provides full-text articles for more than 180 international journals and reports that focus on the many perspectives of complementary, holistic, and integrated approaches to health care and wellness. |
|
CINAHL Plus is the world's most comprehensive nursing & allied health research database, providing full-text for more than 770 journals. In addition, this authoritative file offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, educational software, audiovisuals and book chapters. |
|
Health Source: Nursing and Academic Edition Health Source: Nursing/Academic Edition provides nearly 520 scholarly full-text journals focusing on many medical disciplines. |
|
MEDLINE is a biomedical bibliographic database that was developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). MEDLINE currently indexes over 50 years of articles from more than 5000 journals. PubMed is a government-sponsored MEDLINE system and is freely accessible by anyone who can access the Internet. Comparison: http://www.library.drexel.edu/tutorials/medlinecomparison.html. |
|
Web of Knowledge is an interface that allows cross-searching of Web of Science (1955-present), BIOSIS Previews (1969-present), Medline (1950-present), Zoological Record (1864-present), and Journal Citation Reports (1998-2007). |
Psychological/School:
|
ERIC indexes and abstracts materials in education and related fields. It includes document citations, journal article citations from over 1085 professional journals (983 comprehensive coverage and102 selective coverage) and ERIC digest full-text records. |
|
PsychARTICLES is an online database containing more than 27,500 searchable full-text articles from journals published by APA and allied organizations from 1988+. |
Community/Social Services:
|
Social Services Abstracts provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development. |
|
Sociological Abstracts indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. It provides abstracts to journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers, and citations to book reviews. |
Conduct a Search
Once you have determined which database to use, conduct a search using the keywords generated in "Identify a Search Strategy." You will need to put these keywords together in differing combinations using boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to create focused searches. Spelling, truncation, and nesting can also help to create efficient search strategies.
|
What are the long-term health effects of childhood obesity? |
|
(health effects or health) and (childhood obesity or overweight child*) and adulthood |
Review Sources & Identify New
Once you have located some information sources, find the citations listed at the end of the article. Use these to point you to other credible sources of information.
Cite the sources you use for your assignment. No matter where your information comes from, you always need to cite your sources. APA, Chicago, and MLA are the most frequently used documentation styles.
