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Occupational Therapy - Dallas

Occupational therapy research guide for TWU Dallas students, faculty and staff.

Introduction

CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health) is an EBSCO host database containing more than 1,400 full- text and 5,400 indexed journals. It features peer-reviewed articles and dissertations, as well as evidence-based practice care sheets.

How Do I...?

One of the best features of CINAHL is how intuitive and easy it is to use. The opening screen consists of several sections:

Search Fields

At the top of the page, the database has search boxes for terms to be entered. In the search boxes on the left, you can add terms together using Boolean operators; on the right you can select what fields you wish to search. (Read through the Search Skills page in this guide for more on field searches and Boolean operators.)

Filters

Under the search boxes, a menu gives users various options to help structure their search. The first option, Filter, allows searchers to limit what they are given in the search results, like full text articles, resources that are peer-reviewed, titles published within certain dates, etc.

A reminder: Selecting for "full text" means you are missing on all of the entries that are citations only, some of which might lead to your perfect article. You can always search for the article title in TWUniversal to see if we have access to the article through another database; if we don't, it can always be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

Search Options

The second option allows users to build more complex searches with proximity markers, related words and more.

More targeted searches

The last two options allow users to search the database by publication and CINAHL subject headings.

For publication searches, we recommend using TWUniversal's eJournal listings to find and search specific titles. To learn more about subject heading searches in CINAHL, see the next tab.

  1. Go to the CINAHL Headings tab below the search boxes.

  1. Enter one search term only (this type of search will be built one term at a time). For the options below the search box,
  • Term Begins With = Displays the terms in alphabetical order:
  • Relevancy Ranked = The exact match for the term appears first followed by terms displayed in order of relevance.
  1. Select the most appropriate choice from the search results.

  1. When you select your subject heading, another list of suggested subheadings will appear. Check the boxes of any desired subheadings if you want to be more specific in your search, then click on the "Add to search" button above the list of headings.

Using the Explode and Major Concept features

These options are both checkboxes next to the subject heading(s) you've chosen.

  • When you "Explode" a term, CINAHL looks at every subject heading and narrower subject term that is indexed to the original term. 
  • "Major Concept" finds only records for which the subject heading is a major point of the article. 

Running Your Search

  1. To add more terms to your search, go to the bottom of the screen and select Browse Additional Terms.
  2. When the search is fully built and you are ready, click on the magnifying glass icon in the search box to execute the search.

CINAHL offers evidence-based care sheets — concise summaries of many conditions and their treatment. To search for these exclusively, click on the "Evidence-Based Care Sheets" tab above your search results.

You can browse through all of their EBP care sheets or enter a search term to find a specific topic.

These care sheets give an overview of a condition (What We Know), as well as common treatment approaches for healthcare providers (What We Can Do).

Single Title

  1. Select the "Cite" icon (quotation marks) above the resource information.

  1. Select "Export Citation" from the pop-up window.

  1. Click on "Export to RefWorks" from the list of links.
  2. Sign into RefWorks, if necessary.
  3. Choose the folder where you'd like to save the citation, and click on "Import."

Multiple Citations

  1. Select the articles you wish to export to RefWorks by clicking on the bookmark icon to the right of the citations in your search results or above the citation when the resource detail page is open (see above image; bookmark is to the left of the "Cite" icon).
  2. The articles you have select will be saved. Click on the "Saved" link in the left-hand menu when you have all the articles you wish to select.
  3. Reselect the articles you want to export to RefWorks or use the check box at the top to select all, then click on the Export icon next to the "select all" check box.

  1. This will take you to the same Export Manager menu as shown above.
  2. Select either "Export in RIS Format" or "Export to RefWorks." Note: The more citations you're exporting to RefWorks, the better it will be if you download an RIS file to upload to RefWorks.
  3. If you choose the "Export to RefWorks," the directions are the same as a single article export, above.
  4. If you choose the "Export in RIS Format," this will create a file (which by default will save to your computer's Downloads folder). You will now need to upload the saved file to RefWorks.

In RefWorks

  1. Click on the "Add+" icon.
  2. Click on "Import references."
  3. Click on "Select a file from your computer" and find your upload RIS file in your Downloads folder.
  4. Click on "Import" to start loading the citations into RefWorks.
  1. Create a personal account by clicking "MyEBSCO" at the top of the page.
  2. Use the link to "Create an account" and set up your profile. If you already have an account, simply log in.  
  3. Enter your search.
  4. Click on the "Share" button located above the search results.
  5. Click on the link for "Email Alert."
  6. On the pop-up screen that appears you can set up how frequently to receive alerts on the search you are saving. 
  7. To access your saved searches in the future, click on the "Folder" icon located next to the "Sign in"/"Sign out" icon. Click on "Saved Searches" located on the left hand side of the page.
  8.  The retrieved search or alert can either be rerun, edited, or deleted.