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Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD)

Recommended Databases

The most commonly used databases (CINAHL, Medline, and PubMed) have video tutorials on the left.  If you need help using these or any other database, don't hesitate to contact us.

For a complete listing of health sciences databases available, please click on the link below.

Searching with Keywords VS Subject Headings

A keyword is a term used to perform a search using natural language. A keyword search will search your terms in the entire record of that item (the title, author, abstract, general description, and subjects). Keyword searches generally return more results.

All databases use the keyword search as the default; if you want to search by subject terms, your need to indicate so in the search field.

A subject term or subject heading is a term selected by indexers or catalogers as a predetermined item description. In other words, a person has looked at the book or article and assigned specific subjects that represent the main topics. Therefore a subject term search will only retrieve items assigned to that particular term (similar to what hashtags do). You can find subjects relevant to your topic by looking at the record of the item. A subject search is more relevant and specific than a keyword search.

 

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

MeSH stands for Medical Subject Headings

Boolean Operators

Construct complex search stings by choosing the Advanced Search option within databases and use Boolean operators. Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) are commands that connect two or more terms together.

  • AND is used to narrow your search. Results return will contain all the terms it connects.
  • OR is used to expand your search. Results will contain either term it connects.
  • NOT will limit your search and will exclude terms from your results.

Truncation & Wildcards

Use truncation, wildcards, and quotations to make your search more comprehensive.

  • Truncation refers to a search with multiple endings. Use to replace one or more characters at the end of the sequence of the word, it is ideal to do so at the root of the word.  Most databases, use an asterisk (*) but some databases use a dollar sign or exclamation mark ($ or !) for truncation. For example, searching child* will return results for child, children, childhood, etc.
  • Wildcards can be used where there are multiple spellings for a word. Use to replace one or more characters within the word. Most databases, use an asterisk (*) but some databases use a hashtag sign or question mark (# or ?) for wildcards. For example, if you were searching col*r, you would retrieve color and colour.
  • Quotation marks (" ") allow you to search for exact phrase, such as a title of a book. Use quotation marks to search for those words as a phrase instead of individually. For example a search for “The color purple” will only search for that phrase and not for each word separately, so you will get more specific results.

Limiters & Field Searching

All databases will allow you to limit your search in various ways, filtering out the sources you don't want.  Some of the most common limiters/filters are:

  • Depending on what you are looking for you can use specific limiters to filter your results and make searches more precise.
  • The most common limiters are Peer-Reviewed Journals, which limits your results to scholarly journals that count on experts in disciplines to review drafts of articles prior to publishing them or a specific type of studies.
  • Limiters are specific to databases CINAHL has numerous valuable limiters such as  Evidenced Based, Clinical Queries, Age Groups, among others.
  • When looking for Current Research or Evidence-Based Practices, limit your date range to the last 3-5 years.

If you aren't given limiting options on the basic search screen, try clicking on the "Advanced Search" link.  If you start your search without adding limiters, some databases, like EBSCOhost and PubMed, allow you to apply limiters from your results screen.  The more limiters you use, the fewer results you will get.

Additionally, all databases have sets of searchable fields that enable you to search within a specific section of a record. Most common search fields include:

  • Author
  • Title
  • Journal Title
  • Abstract
  • Keywords
  • Affiliation.

Some databases have Field Codes, such as the EBSCO databases to search within a specific section of the record. The field code is represented in a two-character abbreviation when inserted into the query. When using field searchers, be sure that the term you're using is on the list of acceptable terms for that field. Some fields use like Subject Terms are pre-populated lists of terms from a thesaurus.