MECH 436 - Fundamentals of Injury Biomechanics

Several search techniques are common to a variety of licensed databases. These may include: subject headings, Boolean operators, truncation and wildcards, and limiters. This page will look at each of these individually. 

The  Medline Ovid tutorials are a good starting point for understanding how to apply these techniques to a Medline (Ovid) search. 

Most licensed databases include an option to save your search history, and to set up email alerts when new articles are found on your topic.

• Literature Search Tracking

  Sample spreadsheet for tracking information about your searches and search results.

Subject Headings

Many databases include a system of subject headings (which may also be called descriptors or controlled vocabulary). Subject headings are standardized terms added to articles to make it easier to find all the articles on a particular topic. They will identify articles that might use different terminology for the same idea or variant spellings of a term.

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) are used in the biomedical databases MEDLINE, and PubMed. 

Many other databases have their own unique subject headings specific to their platform. For example, Compendex Engineering Village has a Thesaurus where you can search the controlled vocabulary (subject headings). 

Keywords

In order to be comprehensive in your searching and to leverage the benefits of each article database, it is important to include keywords in your search and not solely subject headings. Keywords can be used in any database and are terms you identify as relevant to your search. Add keywords to your search to find the most current research that might not yet have a subject heading to describe it. There can be delays in subject headings being applied to articles, so to find the most recent articles use keywords in your search strategy. There can be errors in indexing with incorrectly assigned subject headings, which is another reason keywords are helpful.

Phrase searching for keywords

If your keywords are a phrase such as crash-avoidance, you need to add parentheses to search that phrase specifically and not the terms individually. In most cases the dash does not affect the search. 

Example search: "crash avoidance" AND technolog*

PICO or other frameworks can be helpful to take your topic and break it into keywords before finding the subject headings within the database. 

Boolean operators are useful for combining subject headings and keywords.

The word AND narrows your search by capturing two or more ideas or concepts. Combining concepts with AND means you are looking for results that have both or all of the concepts. 

• Example: Stroke AND balance finds articles with both these concepts

The word OR broadens your search by capturing synonyms or variant spellings of a concept. Adding OR means you are looking for results that have either of the terms. 

• Example: Stroke OR CVA finds articles that include either or both concepts

NOT is another operator which will find one concept while excluding another. Use with caution because you may exclude relevant articles this way.

A useful technique to utilize in keyword searching is truncation and wildcards. This is when you use apply a defined character at the end of a word or within a word to search for variant spellings or word endings. Check the database help menu to see what symbols are used for truncation and wildcards. 

Truncation (stemming)

Many databases use an asterisk * to truncate a word at the root.

• Example: rehab* searches for rehabilitation, rehabilitate, rehabilitating... anything that begins with "rehab".

Use truncation with caution to ensure you are finding the terms you need. Truncating too early can broaden the search to unrelated topics. For example, truncating inj* to search injury and injuries would also find injustice and inject. To search for injury, you would truncate injur*. 

Wildcards

Wildcards use a symbol such as a ? or ! to stand in for one letter in a word. This is helpful when searching for variant spellings. For example searching for the term colour could be spelled either the American way "color" or the Canadian and British way "colour." Add a wildcard to search both. 

• Example: colo?r searches both color and colour. 

Some of the UBC article databases and their functions can be found on the Truncation and Wildcard Symbols page. 

Limiters that you may consider using to focus your search include. Remember less is more - as limiters are not always uniformly applied to all of the contents of a database. 

Before starting your search, you'll want to define your research topic in an easily searchable way. This involves separating out the key concepts of your research question. There are various frameworks to help you do this. 

In the health sciences, PICO is a helpful framework for clinical research questions. For other types of research questions, especially outside the health sciences, there are additional frameworks. The Frameworks for Research Questions from the University of Maryland Library provides an extensive list of options. 

PICO example: 

• Population or Problem or Process
• Intervention or Issue or Inquiry
• Comparison (if any)
• Outcomes

PCC example:

• Population/Problem
• Concept
• Context

Use one of the worksheets below can help you formulate a searchable question and begin to build your search. 

Efficient searching follows a structured process:

This work AND animation, by Beck, Charlotte and Zagar, Suzan, identified by UBC Library, is free of known copyright restrictions.