You can save yourself some time and frustration if you plan your search strategy before you start looking for articles. What's in a search strategy?
Putting your research question into the PICO(T) format helps ensure that your question is answerable. It also provides you with the search terms and other parameters that you will need to apply in the databases. Usually, you can pull keywords directly from the PICO(T) question.
For more about subject headings, filters/limits, and exclusion criteria, see the boxes below.
Search Terms
It is important to choose your search terms/keywords carefully. Is there more than one term for the concept for which you are searching? Are you using a technical term or the layman's version? For example, if you are researching chronic lower back pain, it is also known in the literature as simply low back pain. Likewise, Latino may be in an article as Hispanic, and by searching the former, you could miss articles that use the latter. To avoid leaving out relevant articles, use all of the possible terms for your concept:
"chronic lower back pain" OR "low back pain"
"latino" OR "hispanic"
Subject Headings
Alternatively, you can search using subject headings. All databases have a list of controlled vocabulary words that seek to apply a single term to a single concept. When you use subject headings, you do not have to brainstorm all of the possible synonyms for your search term, because the database does that for you. When you enter a serach term, CINAHL and Ovid are set up to automatically suggest subject headings. For instance if you search chronic lower back pain, CINAHL will show you a list of subject headings, of which Low Back Pain is one result. Try searching with subject headings and see how your results differ from searching with just keywords.
Still unsure about subject headings? Watch this video for another explanation.
