MW3104: Introduction to Epidemiology for Midwives

How do you find the most relevant/recent research on your topic and be reasonably confident you haven’t missed important studies? By creating a systematic way of locating relevant materials on your topic, in other words, a search strategy!.

These steps yield a big payoff in terms of searching efficiently and effectively:

1. Focus your topic. Choose something that interests you! Then identify the question you're trying to answer. Example: Do flu shots cause complications in pregnant women?

2. Select keywords and concepts for your topic. List only terms that are crucial to your topic (primarily nouns) and their synonyms: flu shots, influenza vaccines, pregnant women, pregnancy, fetus, complications, issues, pregnancy outcome, etc.

3. Choose appropriate databases and/or other resources. Review descriptions and select the ones to search based on your topic.

4. Write out a search query (what you would type in a database search box), e.g.: influenza vaccines AND pregnancy complications.  Note: Usually search terms are nouns; use caps (as in AND) for connecting terms in your search.

5. Run your search and evaluate the results.  Keep you searches broad and assess results before using more specific terms. 

6. Revise and rerun your search as necessary. If you have too many hits, set (additional) filters/limits; for too few hits use additional synonyms or broader search terms.

Watch this video to learn more about using connecting terms in your database searches:

(Source: Carnegie-Vincent Library at Lincoln Memorial University, 2012)