Researching & Writing Workshop for MADURA

Search Strategy Tips

1. When uncertain -- Browse to learn more, identify issues, and develop your language on the topic.
   In PubMed, find a good article and use Similar Articles
    
2. Be Specific  -- when your research question is fleshed out and you are ready to do a serious search. 
   The more specific the fewer the results; however, there is a balance between being too narrow and too broad. 
    
3. Have Expectations & Assumptions
   • What type of literature (e.g., research evidence or reviews) do you need?
   • Know your purpose - are you aiming for comprehensivity or will just a few articles be okay?
      
4. Think & Plan -- think like an author and then decide on best places to search
   • Think:  If you find an article with the most perfect title for your needs, what is that title?  
     This helps you identify keywords to search
     Also, it might just be an option in the database to search just a keyword or phrase in the title of the articles.
      
5. Learn how to work the databases as well as know what type of information they cover.

What is Your Purpose Today?

While this looks like a very linear process, re-search is an iterative one where you will search, learn, search again and learn more, and keep on doing so until you have a reliable and well thought out search strategy.

Beginning the process - Brainstorming

• Go beyond your research hypothesis or research idea - what are the key concepts?
• If needed, think like an author to help identify those key concepts 

Beginning the process - Check to see if there are any articles on your topic

• Title search with one keyword word or phrase
• Start developing a list of key terms to use when you search - this will change as you learn more about your topic

Preliminary Searches

• Browse - and look everywhere as well as talk to your classmates, mentor, or professor
• Find a very relevant article and get more like it -- use Similar articles in PubMed

Moving beyond the preliminary stage, be specific 

• Revise your generic search terms with the more precise ones you discovered
• Be sure to use synonyms in order to increase comprehensivity

Going deeper and more comprehensive

• Try additional databases because no one database (not even Google Scholar) has everything you might need
• This phase may include a more elaborate search strategy - check with a Librarian if you need help managing controlled vocabulary (MeSH) terms and keyword terms

Synthesizing the Research

Questions you may ask yourself:

What do I pull from a specific research article?  

Do I sum up their research vs. get a specific data point?

If I grab a specific piece of data, am I taking it out of context?

...  and so many more

How to read a scholarly paper

• It is not a linear process.
• Read the abstract for the overview of the article.
• Read the intro & conclusions - learn where they are going and what they found.
• Once you have all that, read the details.

Don't take my work for it: