Public Health : MPH 615 Environmental Health: Searching Tips

ASK A QUESTION:

In China, how does healthcare policy impact suicide prevention among women?

Eliminate the way it is written as a question:

In China, how does healthcare policy impact suicide prevention among women?

Identify synonyms

• China, Chinese, China's
• Suicide
• Women, females, female

Identify phrases, keywords, and asterisk truncation: 

• The asterisk * (above the number 8 on your keyboard) creates a wildcard.   Searching for Chin* ill find China, Chinese, China's
• Putting a phrase in quotes will create a linked word pair, a phrase search, for the two words right next to each other.   "suicide prevention"

Final search would probably resemble

CHIN* "suicide prevention" "health* polic*"

Use your limiters (usually from the Advanced search page): 

English language as original language of publication, gender, age of population, research articles, etc.

• when searching for information, make sure that the ARTICLE is written in ENGLISH; sometimes the abstracts are in English, but the original article is written in a foreign language, often shown by brackets and the originating language [Mandarin]  [Portuguese] [Spanish]
• use your limiters: English language, research articles
• add keywords to searches; start with a condition (premature birth) or behavior (smoking), and add additional ideas