Frequently Asked Questions

How do I search a database like CINAHL or Proquest Central?

 

Let's start with your research question e.g. What are women's experiences of maternity care in Australia and New Zealand.

Use Library Search to:

• get an overview of what might be in the databases
• help you select the best databases to search later.
• build up search terms /concepts that will be useful in your subsequent database searches

Search strategy tips include:

• Put speech marks around phrases e.g. “maternity care” and “antenatal care” 
• Change "Everything" to  “Journal articles” which activates a search across most of the Ara databases.
• Use the filters in the right-hand column, including 
  • Peer-reviewed journals for authoritative articles checked by experts in the field of study and
  • Publication date to choose a date range spanning the last 10 years e.g.

Click here to see an example of the results of the above search. 

A simpler search in Semantic Scholar, a recommended AI research tool, may also find useful articles from authoritative sources.  Note, if Semantic Scholar does not link to full text of the article then copy the title of the journal article into Library Search to get the full text or email library@ara.ac.nz with the article details for help to access it. 

After searching Library Search and Semantic Scholar you will have a useful list of terms sorted into key concepts. See this template example of how to separate your terms for each concept to be searched in your database.

Now we visit the Articles / Databases page of the Subject Guide related to your topic.  For the sample question I will use the Articles/Databases page of the Midwifery Subject Guide. 

Here we can see the recommended databases for this subject area as below. Generally, the most useful databases for the subject are listed first. In this case it is CINAHL Ultimate and Proquest Central.

We will start our database searching in CINAHL Ultimate.

Choose the Advanced Search when you first open CINAHL.

Search tips:

• Use speech marks around any phrases or words you need to appear side-by-side e.g. "maternity care" "obstetric care" "antenatal care"
• Use "or" to broaden your search to any of your selected terms e.g. "maternity care" or "obstetric care" or "antenatal care"
• Think of other words that mean the same as your keyword. These describe one concept of your search strategy.. e.g. experiences or perceptions or attitudes or views
• Only use one concept per line in the search strategy.
• You can just use Zealand or phrase search on "New Zealand" to avoid finding loads of articles just because the word "new" was separately sitting in your search strategy.
• Tick English language to rule out other languages you can't read.
• Tick Peer Reviewed for authoritative articles that have been checked by experts in the subject.
• Tick the appropriate date range. This is commonly the Past 5 years or the Past 10 years to ensure your results up-to-date but check with your tutor if you are unsure.

Your search strategy may look something like below:

Below is an example of one of the results for my topic and I can:

• Click the PDF Full Text icon to download the article.
• Click Cite to find the APA 7th reference.
• Click Share to email the PDF and APA reference to myself (Highly recommended to keep track of all your articles)

As in CINAHL remember to:

• Choose Advanced search
• Keep similar terms for a concept in the one line
• use speech marks around any key phrases
• tick peer-reviewed if scholarly and authoritative articles are needed
• choose your Publication date if needing up-to-date information

As in CINAHL you can:

• Click on Full text PDF to download the article
• Click on the speech mark icon to get the APA reference
• Click the Email icon to email the APA reference and PDF to yourself (Highly recommended)