Step by Step with CINAHL Plus
CINAHL Plus is a great place to start research on nursing topics. CINAHL is an allied health database that offers a large number of full text articles on nearly all medical topics as well as Quick Lesson pamphlets. This handout takes you step by step through both basic and advanced searching.
- Before you touch the keyboard, think carefully about your topic.
Most topics for college level papers have two main ideas in them. If
your topic does not have two ideas, then you may want
to narrow it down. A good example of a paper topic is
the health effects of using a cell phone.
- The main ideas in this topic are: cell phones and health. To put
these ideas together in a way that CINAHL Plus understands, your
search statement becomes: cell phones
AND health. The
AND is not a
word but a logical operator that tells the
computer to look for all articles that deal with both
health and cell phones. Here is how CINAHL Plus
sees your search statement. The overlap between the
circles is your search results.
- To search CINAHL Plus via GALILEO
http://www.galileo.usg.edu, click
the golden Databases A to Z tab in the center of
the row near the top of GALILEO's front page.
Then select C from the alphabet list.
CINAHL Plus is in the middle of the list.
- Type your search statement in to the box in Basic Search. Don't
forget to check off the Full Text box and include
the AND. To remove tiny
articles, scroll down and set Number of Pages to greater than 2.
To find pamphlets called, Quick Lessons, scroll down and select Quick Lessons from the box marked, Publication Type.
- Click the Search button to launch your search.
- CINAHL Plus presents results ten(10) at a time
in a light blue bordered box. You can move
among them with the scroll bar and move between
pages with the, Previous, Next, and Page Number links.
- To see an article's abstract and full text where available, click on its blue title.
- To see a full text article in PDF form, click on its PDF icon.
- To print an article, click on CINAHL Plus' print icon.
b> To email an article, click on CINAHL Plus' email icon and fill out the form.
c> To save an article to a folder you can open at home, login to your personal EBSCO account and then click on the folder icon.
- To end a search in CINAHL Plus, click the Home icon in the browser's top row or close your browser.
CINAHL Plus Advanced Search
If you are visually oriented, want more space and flexibility, or plan to try several related searches, then CINAHL Plus' Advanced Search is for you.
- Instead of using an AND between ideas
in a search statement, in Advanced Search, you fill separate rows with your ideas, one row per idea.
- You can also put two or more synonyms for one idea together using
OR, a logical operator
joins synonyms as a single idea.
- In Advanced Search, fill in
the multibox. Select Full Text, and click
Search.
