Lecture 2 Flashcards
Describe Medline
- Each keyword of your PICO has to be searched individually
- Click on the word to expand the subject tree
- “Explode” = Includes every subject under the tree
- Ex., “Canada” vs. “Canada and every other province as well”
- Ontario would be included as well if you selected explode
- “Focus” = Takes articles where the word is the major focus
- Ex., Canada could be part of a study on international affairs
- “Explode” + “Focus” = All subjects and must be the focus
- “Scope” = Tells you what the word means
- Once all of your keywords are selected, select all of them and use boolean operators
- “Combine with AND” -> needs both keywords
- “Combine with OR” -> takes one keyword or the other
- Go into advanced, limits -> Sex limits, Humans, Age group limits
- 35 million references to jounral articles
- 1966 to present
- 5200
- 40 languages
- updated daily
Ex., exp = explode; * = focus
describe CINAHL
Cumulative Index for Nursing and Allied Health Literature - Nurse-Friendly
- Also has explode and focus (“Major Concept”), Scope will give you the definition
- Same concept for selecting, searching with AND/OR
- Will directly show you subheadings -> commonly searched topics related to the topic
- Ex., Neoplasm -> Diagnosis, epidemiology…
- DIstinct from related/exploded topics
- Need to go into edit to select age groups, sex, etc.
Ex., + = explode, MM = focus, MH = normal
- published by Ebsco Systems
- approx 7 million references
what are peer-reviewed journals
Panel of internal/external reviewers who review manuscripts for publication; external = scholars, experts, “blind” and don’t know the authors
- They use scholarly criteria to judge if a manuscript meets standards
a review article is…
an attempt to sum up the current state of the research on a given topic
where the writer searches for everything relevant to a topic and then synthesizes it for reader
may or may not be done systematically
do not confuse w peer-reviewed journal articles
an article that describes a particular research project
what is a problem statement
statement articulating the research problem
- useful to: identify the context, be broad enough to include central concerns, be narrow enough to serve as a guide to study design
- summarizes the background, rationale, and gap
what is PICOT
P: population
I: intervention
C: comparison
O: outcome
T: time
what is a research question
the specific question/idea that is to be examined in the study (to address the problem)
developing a research question abstract to concrete
- worldview: beliefs and assumptions or the paradigm to which the research belongs
- framework: a general orientation to understanding a phenomenon useful to understand significant factors of interest
- theories: set of interrelated concepts to explain/predict phenomena
- concepts: image/symbolic representation of an abstract idea
- variable: elements that can be observed thru senses
independent variable
variable the researcher changes
ex: application of fertilizer ‘x’ in this experiment
dependent variable
variable affected by change in independent variable
ex: plant growth, # of leaves, # of fruits
research hypothesis
states the actual prediction of a relationship
statistical or null hypothesis
expresses the absence of a relationship (used only in statistical testing)
what is the research topic
- a critical 1st step in any research is examining the existing body of knowledge on the research topic/idea, and it will assist the researcher with: increased understanding about the subject
research will add literature about the topic, scholars/clinicians will be interested in the topic, a study of it will advance your personal goals
what is a literature review
- shares the results of other studies
- relates the study to the larger dialogue in the literature
- provides a framework for establishing the importance of the study
- provides a benchmark for comparing the results to other findings
types of written research reviews
- research report
- proposal
- thesis or dissertation
- free standing literature reviews
