As you begin your search for information about your chosen health issue, start brainstorming which terms you could use to describe what interests you the most about your problem.
"Extreme Heat" AND Health: I could use these terms to start looking for information on the health effects of dangerously hot days. The quotation marks tell a search engine to search the words extreme and heat together in that order. The AND lets the search engine know I want both terms in my results.
"heart attack" OR "myocardial infarction": Remember to brainstorm different ways the author of an article might talk about an issue. In this case, heart attack is the more common term, but myocardial infarction is the medical term for the same thing. You can search them independently or use the OR to tell the database that either phrase in your results is acceptable.
Library databases are organized, searchable collections of high-quality articles and other resources. Information in library databases has already been evaluated, so you know the information is credible and reliable.
Every database has a purpose, but some are better suited for health research than others. These databases may be particularly useful to you for this class. Database links open in a new tab:
Health and Wellness from Gale is one of the easiest databases to start your research. It contains scholarly articles, topic overviews, encyclopedia articles, persuasive essays, and even videos and graphics for class presentations.
CINAHL Complete is the major database for nursing and allied health fields.