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Dental Hygiene Overview: Find Articles

This research guide is designed to help you with researching dental topics.

Search Tips

Search Tips

Keywords
In addition to using your assigned topic as a keyword, try also using some of these terms:
patient education
oral health
systemic health

Combine your keywords using connecting words: AND/OR
oral health AND diabetes
patient education OR patient instruction

You can also use search symbols:
Quotation marks ("") keep words next to each other.
Example: "dental hygiene"

An asterisk (*) can take the place of a word ending to search multiple versions of that word.
Example: modif* will search modify, modifies, modification, modifications

Recommended Databases

Evidence Based Practices

Evidence Based Research

Hierarchy of Study Types and Levels of Clinical Evidence

Print Journals to Browse

Selected Dental Related Journals at the NE Library

  • American Journal of Dentistry
  • Dental Health
  • Journal of Periodontology
  • Journal of the American Dental Association
  • RDH
  • Texas Dental Journal

Help - Types of Sources

How do I know if a resource is scholarly (academic)?

Scholarly Sources:

  • are often written by professors, researchers, and experts in the field with advanced degrees
  • are written for other scholars, professionals, and students
  • have a list of references 
  • use technical language of the field
  • often provide research findings, statistics, and literature reviews

What about Popular sources, like magazines?

Popular Sources:

  • are for the general population
  • avoid technical terminology and use easy-to-understand language
  • usually do not have bibliographies or references
  • often written by staff writers with little specialized knowledge
  • are written for entertainment and general knowledge

 

Source: Cornell University 

What about Primary sources?

Primary sources:

  • provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation without evaluation or interpretation.  
  • contains the information from which a secondary or tertiary source is derived and is written by someone directly involved in the historical event or primary research. 
  • includes original documents such as diaries, speeches, letters, audio transcripts, emails, autobiographies, and interviews
  • includes creative works such as photographs, novels, poetry, music, and artworks 

What about Science?  

In the sciences, a primary source is the published result of experimental or observational research.

Source: University of Maryland Libraries