Course Number: HE201Subject: Health Sciences  Literature Review A literature review is a survey of research about a particular topic. It's specific - focuses on a well-defined research question. It's selective - includes a curated selection of research. It's a synthesis - brings together discussions from across the research. It's a starting point - identifies where your research fits into the picture. It shows accountability - demonstrates how you're tuning-in to others' work and voices responsibly. Image description Goals for your literature review. 1. Define your topic. Itâs common to begin with a broad topic, but how will you develop a more specific focus? 2. Develop your understanding of the literature. Can you map out a themes, outcomes, methodologies, controversies across a body of literature? 3. Identify where you fit in the conversation. How are you contributing to knowledge in your field? Throughout all 3 stages, you'll be finding relevant studies.  Topic Development Learning About Your Topic Before developing a research question, it's helpful to learn a bit about your topic. Both Omni and Google Scholar can be useful for this kind of preliminary searching. Try to find out what questions researchers are asking about your topic, what terms they use to talk about the topic, and any key journals they publish in. From your search results, read only the article titles and abstracts of titles that sound interesting. Research Question A well-defined research question gives direction to your searching. Frameworks can give guidance about what to include. PICO (for clinical topics) Patient, population, or problem - Who is my question about? Intervention - What is the intervention? Comparison - Is there a comparison intervention? Outcome - What is the outcome? EDP(T) Exposure - Could include socioeconomic status, health-related behaviours, health status or environmental exposures. Disease - What disease, disorder or injury am I interested in? Population - Who is my question about? Time - What time period is relevant?  Building a Search Search Terms Keywords What are the major concepts in your topic? What are some synonyms or alternate terms you can use? Consider the terms typically used in research literature. Google "synonyms for ..." If you have an on-topic article, see what terms get used in the title/abstract.  Major Concept Keywords Cancer cancer, neoplasm, melanoma  Article Databases There is a list of databases relevant to Health Sciences. Choose databases to search based on the descriptions. Limit results to peer-reviewed. Sort by most recent publications first. Discover key articles. Recognize key scholars. Avoid missing important results. Cut out irrelevant results.  Search Tactics Try using some of the following database search tactics to get better results.  What is the tactic? What does the tactic do? Examples Boolean AND Use AND to ensure that all terms appear in every search result. depression AND home care Boolean OR Use OR to ensure that at least one term appears in every search result. transgender OR LGBTQ OR GLBT Phrase searching Use âquotation marksâ to find more than one term in a row. âbrain cancerâ Truncation Use an asterisk* at the end of a term to include multiple endings. trauma* trauma, traumatic, traumatically, traumatize, traumatized, traumatizing Wildcard Use a question mark ? within a term to search for variations of a single character. decoloni?e decolonize, decolonise  Question! I did a search for cancer AND music therapy in CINAHL. What happens to the # of results if I search for cancer AND "music therapy"? What happens to the # of results if I search for cancer* AND "music therapy"?  Field Searching Use the drop-down beside a search box to find terms in specific areas of results. Codes beside each field tell the database where to search for a term. Example: ti("adverse childhood experiences") in PsycINFO (all results will have the term in titles).  Limits You can limit results to peer-reviewed or scholarly. A date limit is also often useful in health research.  Subjects These are controlled terms from a database thesaurus that are assigned to articles. Databases have different thesauri, which affects the subjects you use. Note: you'll usually see a link to the "Subjects Headings" or thesaurus in a database's menu. Example: MESH.EXACT("Health Services for Transgender Persons") in MEDLINE (ProQuest) Example: (MH "Transgender Persons+") in CINAHL  Major Concept Keywords Subjects Cancer cancer, neoplasm, melanoma CINAHL: Neoplasms Melanoma  Question! What is the CINAHL subject for teenager? Search Strategy Planning Worksheet Managing Relevant Results Citation management software = a method for storing, organizing, and citing literature you can use as you search. Mendeley and Zotero are two free examples. Â