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Planning a structured search in health (Open Learning)

Planning your search in health

Laptop covered in post-it notesThese pages aim to introduce you to the principles of planning a structured search in the health disciplines. 

Planning your search can help you decide what you want from your research and can save you time.

 

Objectives:

By the time you have completed this tutorial you should be able to:

  • Work out how to identify the main keywords (and useful synonyms (alternative keywords)) for a research question/topic
  • Understand what Boolean operators are and how to use them
  • Recognise the evidence based practice frameworks PICO/PIO/PEO and understand how they can help to structure your search
  • Use different advanced searching techniques in a search
  • Utilise the advice given to plan searches in future projects/assignments

Alternative formats

If you prefer to view this tutorial as either a Word document. PDF or as a video, select the Alternative Formats option from the left hand menu.

 

Time allowance

This tutorial should take 15 mins to complete.