Module 3: Searching Health Databases Effectively
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Searching Health Databases Effectively |
In the previous module Finding Information: Health, you were provided an extensive list of databases where you can find information for your research assignment. The following tips can ensure that you are able to effectively use these health databases to find information that is relevant to your topic.
Improving Your Search: PICO Method
PICO is a technique for designing a well developed search in a health science database, and can be utilized effectively for scientific research in many disciplines. PICO helps a researcher identify all of the key terms that should be included in a search. PICO is an acronym that stands for:
P - Patient: what is the patient population that are you interested in? Think of this as the subject of your research.
I - Intervention: what is the exposure or intervention that you are interested in? Think of this as the independent variable in an experiment.
C - Comparison: what is the comparison to the current intervention? What other factors could be considered as an alternative to the main intervention? For many types of research, this step can be omitted.
O - Outcome: what condition are you hoping to measure, change, or improve? Think of this as the dependent variable in an experiment.
While this process may seem formulaic, it helps identify terms that should be included in your search strategy. By doing this BEFORE you attempt to do a search, you can ensure that you will not waste your time looking at search results that are not relevant to your research.
Want more information on how to create a PICO search for your topic? Watch this 4-min. video Links to an external site., or download and try completing the PICO worksheet Links to an external site..
Improving Your Search: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
MeSH are a distinctive feature of PubMed (MEDLINE). PubMed's inclusion of MeSH allows researchers like you to use consistent vocabulary when searching for biomedical information.
Why use MeSH when searching PubMed?
Example: You want to do research on how sugar can impact cancer development in laboratory mice. In PubMed Links to an external site., you could do the following search:
cancer AND "laboratory mice" AND sugar
Performing that search in PubMed Links to an external site. may lead to some problems. A keyword search for "cancer" will not necessarily retrieve articles on tumors, and a keyword search for "sugar" might yield results on carbohydrates, or sugar alcohols, or sugar phosphates, or sugar acids, etc. How can you make sure that you are searching PubMed Links to an external site. using the right terms? By using MeSH!
In the previous example, using MeSH could drastically improve our search results. You can think of MeSH as a thesaurus for the database. When you perform a traditional keyword search, PubMed Links to an external site. cannot predict all the terms you meant to include; rather, it will only search for the terms you actually entered. By using MeSH, you are searching the database several different variant versions of a keyword simultaneously. This means that your search results will be more comprehensive, and more relevant to what you actually wanted to find.
Back to our previous example: rather than a keyword search for "cancer" and "sugar," we can perform a MeSH search for "neoplasms" and "glucose."
Want more instructions on how to use MeSH? See the video below, or consult the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Tutorial. (Links to an external site.)
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Questions? For assistance developing your research strategies, or finding resources for your topic, or any other questions, please contact public health specialists: Nedelina Tchangalova, nedelina@umd.edu (UMD Libraries, College Park). Profile Links to an external site. Eileen Harrington, eharring@umd.edu (Priddy Library, Shady Grove Library). Profile Links to an external site. |