What is a primary source for nursing research?
• A first-hand report of an original study, experiment, or event
• Written by the person(s) who conducted the study/experiment or witnessed the event
• Can be quantitative or qualitative in nature
When a nurse researcher interviews patients about their health behaviors, a pharmaceutical company conducts clinical trials on a new drug, or a hospital surveys its nursing staff, they are creating primary information.
An original research article should consist of the following headings: Structured abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) and may be Randomized Control Trial (RCT), Controlled Clinical Trial (CCT), Experiment, Survey, and Case-control or Cohort study.
Sample article:
In CINAHL like other EBSCO databases you can filter your results by scrolling down to the Limit Your Results section of the Advanced Search screen. There is no PRIMARY article filter but within CINAHL there are multiple filter you can use:
RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIALS CHECKBOX: This will filter your results to randomized controlled trials research articles only.
RESEARCH ARTICLE CHECKBOX: This will filter your results for research articles, both quantitative and qualitative. However, BOTH primary AND secondary research articles will be retrieved, so you will need to examine your results carefully.
PUBLICATION TYPE: Try Clinical Trial, Randomized Controlled Trial, or another publication type appropriate for the studies you need.
CLINICAL QUERIES: Choose the appropriate focus area for your question (Therapy, Prognosis, Review, Qualitative, or Causation) and desired scope (High Sensitivity=more articles/some less relevant, High Specificity=fewer articles/higher relevance, or Best Balance). Again, BOTH primary AND secondary research articles will be retrieved, so you will need to examine your results carefully.
Try using each of these options separately. These will work with keyword searches as well as subject searches. If you are looking for a very specific type of study, try including the study type as a keyword instead of using limiters.
In Medline (EBSCO) there are a couple of recommended filters from the Limit Your Results section :
PUBLICATION TYPE: Try Clinical Trial, Controlled Clinical Trial, Randomized Controlled Trial, or another publication type appropriate for the studies you need.
CLINICAL QUERIES: Choose the appropriate focus area for your question (Therapy, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Reviews, Clinical Prediction Guides, Qualitative, Causation, Costs or Economics) and desired scope (High Sensitivity=more articles/some less relevant, High Specificity=fewer articles/higher relevance, or Best Balance). Again, BOTH primary AND secondary research articles will be retrieved, so you will need to examine your results carefully.
Try using these options separately. These will work with keyword searches as well as subject searches. If you are looking for a very specific type of study, try including the study type as a keyword instead of using limiters.
In PubMed filter your results by using the options on the left sidebar. Click on one or more filters to include those attributes. There is no filter for PRIMARY articles but you can filter your results by article type.
ARTICLE TYPE: Try Clinical Trial, Randomized Controlled Trial, or another type of study appropriate for you need. If you do not see the type of article you need click on the Customize link to see more options and add them as a category.
Included in The Cochrane Library is The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. This database contains citations and abstracts for controlled trials.
After running your search, click on the "TRIALS" button in the left sidebar. This will display any controlled trials retrieved from the database.
If you identify any articles you would like to retrieve, you will probably need to take the journal information down and look for the issue (if we have a subscription) through our Periodicals List or check in Google Scholar @ HPU to see if we have access.
The TRIP Database is a UK-based meta-search engine for clinical evidence. After typing in your search, you may apply filters from the right sidebar. TRIP does have a filter for PRIMARY RESEARCH and KEY PRIMARY RESEARCH and CONTROL TRIALS.
However please note that this is an open-access (free) database, and the links to the articles will take you to PubMed records and not the actual articles themselves. So if you identify any articles you would like to retrieve, you may need to note the citation information and search our Periodicals List or check in Google Scholar @ HPU to see if we have access.
