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NU 631: Scientific Inquiry & Evidence for Clinical Practice

This guide is designed with NU403 and NU631 in mind, but is a great resource for anyone doing evidence-based practice nursing research.

Creating Search Strategies

The worksheet below discusses how to create a search using keywords and boolean operators (AND / OR).

Once you have a topic in mind, it's a good idea to run some searches to see what research exists on that topic.  To get the most out of the library databases, plan your searches.  You'll need to identify the key concepts in your research question, and then determine if you are using the most effective keywords.  The Database Search Strategy Worksheet can help you plan this out.

 

Understanding Boolean Search

The link below is a handout explaining Boolean logic

Boolean Logic is a fancy term for a simple concept.  Boolean operators are the connecting terms AND and OR used when constructing searches in the databases.  It's called Boolean because it was named after a famous mathematician, George Boole, who developed it.

Database Search Tutorial