Think carefully about the search terms and techniques you use in your searches. Remember that the databases will just literally search for the terms you have added.
You will be expected to at least use some or a combination of the techniques below to help you create a comprehensive search strategy for your review.
Get definitions of searching techniques from key textbooks. Search for Boolean or searching techniques
How to Write Your Nursing Dissertation
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Doing a literature review in health and social care
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Finding the right words and phrases to search for can be difficult and time consuming.
Think of different words or phrases that can help your search. This is called synonyms. This may mean that your search includes records that you might not have found before or widen the scope of your search to include those records that have used different words than you initially searched for.
e.g.
| nurse practitioner | advanced practice nurse or ANP or NP |
| care home | residential care or nursing home or residential home or long term care |
| mental health | mental illness or mental disorder or psychiatric illness or well-being |
If you're struggling to think of other words/phrases:
Once you have your different words and phrases you can combine them using Boolean techniques to make your search even better. Boolean are simple words (AND, OR, NOT etc.) used to combine or exclude words/phrases in the search. Use the tabs below for examples and explanations.
Boolean searching techniques (or operators) can:
Using AND between keywords reduces your search results
| basic keyword search = too many irrelevant results | nursing management |
| will combine keywords together and reduce results | nursing AND management |
| can be used more than once in each search | nursing AND management AND dementia |
If you're searching in Google Scholar, then have a look at these Search Tips.
OR helps you find retrieves more results for similar terms. It means you're not missing out on any relevant research.
| think of synonyms (different words that mean similar things) | nursing management |
| will widen search out to include both terms | nursing management OR nursing care |
| combine different Boolean techniques together | nursing management OR nursing care AND dementia OR alzheimers |
Use NOT to exclude results that you're interested in and reduce the number of records retrieved.
| will exclude leadership from search results | nursing management NOT leadership |
| combine different boolean techniques to find more relevant results | nursing care OR nursing management NOT leadership AND dementia |
Add double inverted commas "..." around a phrase will search for the exact sequence of words in the exact order without searching for individual key words. This works across all databases and search engines and reduces your search results.
| will search for "nursing care" as a phrase and not nursing or care as separate key words | "nursing care" |
| combining phrase searching with other Boolean techniques can help focus your search | "nursing care" AND dementia |
| "nursing care" OR "nursing management" AND dementia |
Truncation can extend your search out to ensure you're not missing out on any relevant records. Works with words with different endings. Go to last letter of word before ending changes and add *. Here's some examples:
| for nurse, nurses, nursing | nurs* |
| for midwife, midwives, midwifery | midwi* |
| for manage, managed, manager, management | manag* |
| Some database (CINAHL, Medline) will allow truncation inside a phrase also | "nurs* manag*" AND dementia |
For advanced searches using (.........) called a paretheses groups terms or Boolean operators together. It helps the database process your logic correctly and control the order of combinations in advanced searching. CINAHL and Medline automatically add parentheses around each line in an advanced search.
| database will search for key words or phrases inside brackets together | ("nursing care" OR "nursing management") |
| use separate brackets for different terms | ("nursing care" OR "nursing management") AND (dementia OR Alzheimers) |
| You can add a double bracket to keep control of combining terms | (("nursing care" OR "nursing management") NOT leadership) AND (dementia OR Alzheimers) |
| nurs* AND ( "wound care" or "wound healing" or "wound management" or "wound treatment" or "wound assessment" ) |
| ( adolescen* or teenagers or young adults or teen or youth ) AND ( suicid* or "suicide prevention" or "suicide reduction" or "suicide intervention" or "suicidal ideation" ) AND ( "mental health nurs*" or "psychiatric nurs*" or "mental health professional" ) |
| (( dementia or alzheimer's or "cognitive impairment" or "cognitive decline" or "memory loss" ) AND ( "informal caregivers" or "family caregivers" or "informal carers" or "family carers" or carers or caregivers or relatives )) AND ( support or help or need or advice or burden or stress or fatigue or burnout or strain ) AND ( nhs or uk or "united kingdom" or britain or england or wales or scotland or "northern ireland" ) |
In some databases you can use controlled language which is a standardised vocabulary which means one term will cover every synonym of that term in that database. The most common are MeSH Headings and CINAHL Headings.
Controlled vocabularly can:
Sometimes MeSH Headings and CINAHL Headings are different so double-check the key terms searched.