Research Guides: Nursing 197 Library Research Guide: Search Terms, Keywords and Finding Articles

Search Term Tips

It is important to try different search terms when you are looking for articles.
- Include any variations in spelling: breast feeding, breastfeeding or try looking for "postpartum depression" in addition to the hyphenated version, "post-partum depression".
- Include synonyms of your search terms, such as: "birth control" in addition to "contraception", or "pre-marital sex" in addition to "sex before marriage".
- Also look for alternative terms in connection to cultural groups, for example: enter "Hispanic" and "Latinx", when researching articles on Hispanic mothers. Think about including the search word, "immigrant" also, when researching topics related to mothers from different cultures or ethnic backgrounds.

As you look at articles, collect new keywords to add as your search terms. For example, if you are searching for "prenatal" and you see the word, "maternal" showing up a lot in your results, try adding "maternal" as a keyword.

Only put in one or two keywords when doing your search, not a complete sentence. For example, if you want to write about post-partum depression in Vietnamese mothers, try entering "post-partum depression" and Vietnamese or Vietnam. You can group a few words together as a phrase, and put in quotation marks, like "breast implants".
If you are researching a certain region of a geographic area, try entering the name of the country, as a subject, such as "Mexico" or "India" in the search bar, in addition to your other subject search term.

A-Z Nursing Subject Guide
A link to over 15 different Nursing databases, with articles from magazines, trade journals and scholarly peer-reviewed journals. Databases included are CINAHL, Health Source: Nursing Academic Edition, as well as Nursing databases from Gale and ProQuest.

Cinahl Plus Full Text database filtering tips This is a screenshot of the filters you can apply to get relevant results for this assignment, if you searching in the Cinahl Plus Full Text database.