TR5104: Research Methods in Health Science

It may be appropriate to search for scholarly information on the web.  Usually this is when you are looking for:

• your professional organizations, and expert websites  -  Often these publish their own journal, or other publications, and some online access is usually free.
• a very recent topic (cutting edge)
• statistics or government info
• dissertations
• unpublished or obscure information

Here are a few we recommend.

Government sites:

• MedlinePlus (NIH consumer health database)
• FastStats (CDC)
• Food & Nutrition Information Center (U.S. National Agricultural Library)

Non-profit organization & association sites:

• Nutritionfacts.org

Educational sites:

• Micronutrient Information Center (Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State U.)
• The Nutrition Source (Harvard School of Public Health)

Websites can be excellent research sources, but require critical thinking skills to determine whether or not they offer credible information. Here are some criteria to consider:

Why can't I just Google to find research?  Being an efficient searcher means knowing when to use what tool.  You will find the most relevant scholarly journal articles (both primary and secondary) when you search in databases.

Watch this video, Library Databases versus Search Engines, to learn about how their differences affect your searches. (Created by the Wellington Medical and Health Sciences Library, 2010).

Watch this video on how to construct more sophisticated database search queries using Boolean operators. Notice that Boolean operators must be capitalized when being used as part of searching.

(Source: Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, University of AL at Birmingham)