NRS Search Strategies : Practice pt. 1

For this first exercise, let's try some keyword combinations. Your starting topic is the one referenced in earlier pages:

"Team building to implement change"

Using this topic and the keywords listed on the page Thinking about your topic, perform an advanced search in CINAHL (keywords only, no other restrictions) and explore the number of results you get.

• How many results do you get by using a combination of the terms "team building" and "implement change"?

• Is it possible to increase the number of articles found with these same keywords by adding a search feature (such as truncation)?

Try synonymous and alternate keywords, and "outcome" keywords.

• What keyword combination gives you the most useful results?

• How do we define "useful"? Number of articles found, relevancy, titles?

Apply the most common limiters: date published, journal subset, evidence-based, and geographic subsets.

• Do you still get useful results after applying limiters?

• Which one of these limiters do you think is the most restrictive?