Search Strategy Development
1. Write the question.
Example 1--"prevention of bed sores in nursing homes"
Example 2--"nursing interventions in teen pregnancy"
2. Select the important terms to search
Example 1--prevention, pressure ulcers (more appropriate than bed sores), nursing homes
Example 2--nursing interventions, teen, adolescent, pregnancy
3. Consider possible points of focus such as language, date of publication, type of publication, etc.
4, Consider truncating. Most databases allow for finding variations of terms by using the symbol * in CINAHL. This ensures that variations of terms will appear--teen* will result in teen, teens, teenage, teenager, etc.
5. Consider Boolean searching--combining your terms with and, or, not. With Boolean Search, you place similar terms in paranthesis. See more on Boolean Searching.
Example 1: prevent* AND (pressure ulcers or bed sores) AND nursing homes
Example 2: nursing interventions AND (teen OR adolescent) AND pregnanc*
CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature) Complete is the world’s most comprehensive source of full-text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 1,300 journals indexed in CINAHL. CINAHL Complete is the definitive research tool for all areas of nursing & allied health literature and supports nursing and allied health professionals, students, educators and researchers."
| CINAHL Complete | PubMed |
| Coverage: 1937 to date | Coverage: 1940’s to date |
| Includes citations to journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, nurse practice acts, Evidence-Based Care Sheets, research instruments, etc. |
Includes only citations to journal articles |
| Focus: nursing and allied health literature | Focus: biomedical literature |
| Peer Review journal limit available | Not possible to identify peer reviewed journals |
| Includes cited references at the end of many articles. (articles who have cited that one) |
Does not include cited references |
| Indexes 5000 journals; full text for 1300 | Indexes 5500 journals; links to full text if free. |
