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Scope note: This web page supplements information needs of students in the School of Social Work. The information presented here is not meant to be comprehensive. Please contact Library staff for additional information at social.work.library@umich.edu.
CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing & Allied Health Literature) is a database of citations from 1982 to the present to articles published in nursing and allied health journals. Some nursing dissertations, health care books, conference proceedings, and audio-visual materials are indexed, too. While this database provides the full-text for selected journals (approximately 7000 records have links to the full-text articles), most of the records are citations only. Some records include an author-provided abstract of the article. This database is useful for social work research in that it uses a thesaurus of medical terms and covers the health sciences from a practitioner's perspective.
CINAHL is most useful when:
Outlined below is a two step strategy to help you search the database more effectively and efficiently.
Step #1.
Define your topic in the form of a question or statement, for example, Is there any research on elder abuse in nursing homes?. Then, separate the question into specific logical components or concepts:
| CONCEPT 1: elder abuse |
CONCEPT 2: |
CONCEPT 3: research |
Step #2.
Use a thesaurus to choose descriptors or subject headings that describe your concepts. There is a medical subject heading thesaurus, also used in MEDLINE, which you can search to determine the appropriate terminology. Valid medical subject headings (MeSH) are available on the web at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html. MeSH provides the official terminology or authoritative list of subjects used in most medical databases. Using the appropriate terminology is important, in that it enables you to hit upon citations about your topic rather than unrelated items using words which are too common. About 70% of CINAHL subject headings are also MeSH terms.
Using the example in step #1, write down all appropriate terms from the subject mappingsthat describe the concepts, for example:
| CONCEPT 1: elder abuse |
CONCEPT 2: nursing homes |
CONCEPT 3: research |
||||||
| elder abuse domestic violence |
nursing homes homes for the aged residential facilities |
descriptive research outcomes research evaluation research research methodology literature review, etc. |
Consider methods for focusing your topic, either with additional descriptors, with specific journal titles, with types of publications (book, dissertation, or journal article), or with a specific publication year.
Continuing to use the example topic of research about elder abuse in nursing homes, click in the input box and type in one of your key terms (e.g. elder abuse). Be sure to select that the "Suggest Subject Headings" box above the search field is checked. The system will attempt to match your keyword to the thesaurus of valid subject headings. Click on the "Search" button.
The system displays the subject mapping for keywords of elder abuse, which happens to be "elder abuse." Click on the Scope to see the thesaurus entry for the subject elder abuse. Go back to Mapping Display screen. Click on the term "elder abuse" to see a Tree Display for the term. This display shows how this term has been defined in relationship to ther searchable terms within this database and can be helpful for finding broader or narrower terms.
The Subheading section on the right of the screen includes valid subheadings that will qualify your search. Selected subheadings can be combined with either the connector "OR" or "AND" (there is a drop-down box located over the tab that says "CINAHL Headings". Clicking on the "scope" link next to each subheading will provide information about each term(s). Check the subheading(s) of interest (in the example of elder abuse, you might select subheadings of evaluation, psychosocial factors, prevention and control, and therapy). Click on the "Search Database " button.
The first search statement will appear with the number of records that meet the search requirements in short citation format. You may click on the title of the article to see the abstract, or on the "MGet It" button to get the full article, if it is available.
Notice that you may "Limit" (
) the last search set by clicking on the "Refine Search" tab. You can limit your search to articles that have references, linked full text, and/or abstracts available, to articles published within a time frame, by specific research techniques and populations, and much more.
As you display the results of your search, you may add them to your folder. At the top of the page is a link to your folder. After you mark a few citations on a page, go your folder. Place a check in the box of the items you would like to print/e-mail/save/export, and put your preference at the top. Select the Export option if you want to download the citations into a bibliographic management software like ProCite, EndNote or RefWorks.
To find out where your cited journal is held on campus or is available online, click on the MGet It button. A new window will appear indicating whether full-text is available for the journal title. If no full-text is available, click on the library catalog link. A catalog search for the publication title will run in a separate window. Display the full record to discover which volumes are on campus and which libraries own those volumes. Remember to return to your CINAHL window to either return to your search or to reset the timer.
You can delete search steps that give you no results.
Displaying the complete record will give you everything entered into the database for that record, except the full-text of the article.
Use the limits options under the input box for more precise searching.
If a full-text article has graphics, tables or charts, be sure to print them. The graphics are sometimes not available when e-mailed or saved from CINAHL.
Due to limitations in logins to this database, please remember to log off when your searching is complete.
You can save searches temporarily or permanently. A temporary search is saved for 24 hours; a permenant search is saved until you delete it. If you are regularly looking for citations on a certain topic, you can create the search statements, and run the saved search on a regular basis, without having to re-key the search each time. You must use a validated login to Medsearch in order to save searches. When you click on the "Run Saved Search" link, all the saved searches you have created will display. Select the one you want to use and click on the "Run Search" button. A message will display that the "Saved Search Execution Complete," and clicking on the "Main Search Page" button will display the search statements and the results.
Use CINAHL subject headings and key terms for a type of citation you regularly need, create a saved search, and run that saved search each time you need to search CINAHL, no matter what your topic might be.
This database is restricted to validated U-M students, staff and faculty.
Created by: Karen Reiman-Sendi
Content last updated on: August 22 2006
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