Resources by Subject: HCM 2301: Health Law & Ethics: Searching the Databases

Developing a Search Strategy

Having an effective search strategy will help ensure the research process goes smoothly and save time in the long run.

Steps to Creating a Search Strategy:

Research background information on the topic.
Develop a research question. What questions will your research answer?
Identify keywords to search from your research question
Create search strings
Consider what types of resources you can use in your research
Identify where you can look for resources

Search Background Information

Background Information

Researching about a topic to get general background information can be helpful in formulating a research question. The more information you know about a topic upfront, the more informed your research question will be. Try the following databases for background information:

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
eBook collection that contains reference materials from all subject areas.
SAGE Knowledge This link opens in a new window
SAGE Knowledge contains more than 3,500 carefully selected titles by world-class authors on hot topics across the social sciences.
African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Access primary and secondary resources related to African American history

Develop a Research Question

The research question is the first step in the research process. Once you pick a topic, you want to find an answerable question which you will answer in your paper or project by doing proper research.

Tips for Formulating Your Research Question:

Try to find a question around something that interests you about the topic.
Consider looking into cause-and-effect relationships or arguing a certain course of action.
Ask a question that does not have a "yes" or "no" answer. Be open to multiple answers and allow the research to guide you to your answer.
Be careful about strong opinions you have that might as it can cause you to be biased in your search and ignore evidence that goes against your opinion.
Make sure your question is clear, concise, focused, and arguable.

Mind Mapping

A mind map is a type of graphic organizer that uses a diagram to visually organize ideas and concepts. The main topic is in the middle with subtopics and other details branching off the main topic. It can be used to brainstorm keywords and possible directions to take the research question. A mind map looks like the following:

Identify Keywords

You can brainstorm keywords to search for resources by drawing the keywords from your research question, listing out synonyms, and by looking at subject headings.

Getting Keywords from your Research Questions

Do video games increase violence among youths?

Keywords: video games, violence, youths

Brainstorm Synonyms and Like Concepts

Video games: television, media, computer games

Violence: fighting, destructiveness, cruelty, attack

Youths: adolescents, teenager, young adults

Creating Search Strings

You can put keywords together into search strategies using boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT).

AND: Finds resources that have all keywords linked with AND

violence AND youth

OR: Finds resources that have either keyword and both keywords. You might use it between synonyms or like concepts

youth OR adolescent

NOT: Finds resources without the keyword after the "NOT"

"video games" NOT television

Complex Search Strings:

Keywords can be combined with multiple boolean operators. Parenthesis can be used to group off concepts and tell the search engine which keywords to combine first.

(video games OR television) AND violence

Other Search Techniques:

Putting phrases that are two or more words into quotes (i.e. "video games") searchings the phrase as one unit so that it finds the words right next to each other.

Truncation is putting a * at the end of a keyword to capture all possible endings to a word. i.e. child* would find results that have child, childs, children, childhood, etc.

Types of Resources

Once you have some search strings built, it's important to consider what type of resources will be useful in your research. Different resources serve different purposes and have different levels of information.

Databases to Search

Different databases at the library have different resources and some have a mix of resources.

Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
Features updated viewpoints, topic overviews, full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, statistics, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Contains full-text scholarly articles dating from the 19th century. Most articles appear 2-5 years after publication. Includes all academic subjects including music.
Proquest Central This link opens in a new window
Provides access to a variety of content types covering many academic disciplines.
Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
Search for articles from all academic disciplines
Access World News This link opens in a new window
Access newspapers, news magazines, and radio/television transcripts - including North Carolina newspapers.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Contains from inception of both U.S. statutory materials, U.S. Congressional Documents and scholarly journals, all of the world's constitutions, all U.S. treaties, collections of classic treatises and presidential documents, and access to the full text of state and federal case law.
North Carolina Digital Heritage This link opens in a new window
Provides libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and other cultural heritage institutions with the opportunity to promote and increase access to their collections through digitization.

Library Catalog
Search for books located in the library

Utilizing Database Filters

Once you conduct a search in a database, there are filters that allow you to narrow down your results further to get the most relevant results. The database filters are usually located on the left side of the results screen. Often databases have similar filters, but some have ones that are unique to them.

Common filters include limiting:

to Full Text - limits results to resources with full text access and removes results that are only citations or abstracts
to Peer reviewed/Scholarly - limits results that come from resources that are considered peer-reviewed or scholarly. Peer reviewed meaning that the articles are reviewed by other experts in the field before publication
by Source Type - limits results by a certain type of resources such as scholarly journals, books, newspapers, etc.
by Publication Date - limit results to a designated publication date range
by Language - limits results to resources written in certain languages

Other Filters Include

Subject
Person
Location
Methodology
Gender
Age
Population

Examining a Resource Record

Once you find a resource that is fitting to your research question, you can look at the details about the resource to find subject headings and other ways the record has been tagged. These subject headings might lead to other keywords to use in search terms. You can also click on subject headings to see other resources that have also been tagged with the term. It can be a great way to find related resources.