Notes for Week 4 Scoping Review PDF

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Week 4 Scoping Review Pre-workshop - LIBRARY2GO

Library2Go: Summary Matching resources to your level of expertise Before you start on your research project, take a moment to reflect on your level of expertise in the field you are about to research. Every researcher starts from a beginner level and progresses through stages with time. You might be an expert in one field, an intermediate in another and a beginner in yet another field, so it is important to ask yourself, each time you want to start new research, which level you are at and start accordingly.

Expertise level

What it means

Researchers new to the subject area will need to start their search for information by browsing authoritative resources such as textbooks and dictionaries, and by clarifying definitions of the major concepts. Jumping straight to scholarly databases without having a clear understanding of major concepts will result in frustration and unnecessary loss of time. If you are an inexperienced researcher, Wikipedia is generally not a good idea because its content is not validated by experts and you might end up using irrelevant, inappropriate or poor quality sources. For the intermediate level researchers, who know something about their research topic, scholarly databases provide a solid starting point because they collect quality information and group it according to subject. You will still need to evaluate the quality of each individual research paper retrieved from a database though. Experienced researchers may start research by searching Google or Wikipedia; their

Referen ce resourc es

Librar y datab as es

Web

expertise will allow them to separate fact from fiction, sort through bias, and make sense of every piece of information available.

Where to find relevant information Textbooks etc. When starting on a new research topic it makes sense to get a general idea of the main concepts, definitions and theories before proceeding with a detailed research. For example, if you are required to write an essay on different theories of depression, you need to start by identifying what theories there are and then search for each theory individually as a keyword. To do so, explore reference sources in a relevant research field, including textbooks, dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Citing Wikipedia in your academic work is not a good idea; however, you can explore the reference lists provided in Wikipedia articles to do further research. Note that information in reference sources can be outdated as it takes time to compile, curate and disseminate research findings. To explore the most recent research you need to search journal articles. Journal articles A journal article is a written summary of a research process and findings. Researchers use them to understand their field of research, to then test or build upon that research. You may use journal articles to better understand your topic. When you need to dive deeper into a research topic to find information that is 1) recent and 2) of high quality, search for journal articles. Articles are published regularly which helps to make research results available more quickly than books would allow. The quality of journal articles is handled in part by the peer review process that involves experts in a field reviewing any submissions from researchers seeking publication. You can limit search results to peer reviewed articles in Library Search; here you will also have access to full text of the subscription‐based resources using your unikey and unikey password. Another way to find peer‐reviewed articles is to search directly within relevant databases. If you select Google Scholar from the list of databases provided by the University library, you will be able to access full text articles as well. Searching Google for scholarly articles is not recommended. It does not mean, however, that you should not search Google for other types of resources. Google For some of your assignments you might be asked to find information on government policy, patient education, or to explore a current public debate on a contested topic. Textbooks and journal articles do not provide this kind of information; Google does. When searching Google, it pays off to remember that it provides no quality control over the information you retrieve; you need to exercise your own judgment. To help you determine the quality of the retrieved resources, including websites, web docs and journal articles, a few frameworks exist. See the end of this summary for one such framework, CRAP, that stands for Currency, Reliability, Authority and Purpose.

The CRAP test

Matching tools to needs Where will you start your research for each of the following topics? Research topic

Tool

Discuss the debate around childhood immunisation from different perspectives

Google

Discuss the effectiveness of polypharmacy

Textbooks or dictionaries

What are the latest developments in treating type 2 Journal articles diabetes? The debate around childhood immunisation involves a range of groups including people without medical training or science backgrounds. To find about their views, you need to search Google. In order to discuss the effectiveness of polypharmacy, you would first need to provide a definition of this term. The best place to look for definitions are textbooks or dictionaries. The latest research is published in scholarly journals. To search for latest developments in treatment, use databases to search for journal articles.

Identifying main concepts Now that you know where to look for resources, let's talk about your research topic. You could be given a research topic to work with, or asked to come up with one. Either way, to find exactly what you need you'll have to know what are the main concepts in your topic. Below is a diagram showing the process of identifying main concepts in a research topic:

Not sure where to start? 1. Start with the nouns: these are often main concepts 2. Check the definitions of words in the research topic in a dictionary, encyclopedia or textbook 3. Exclude any words that tell you how to answer the question (e.g. 'evaluate', 'compare', 'outline', 'discuss')

Can you identify main concepts? Example: Are non‐pharmacological interventions effective in reducing symptoms of depression in older adults The main concepts are “non‐pharmacological interventions,” “symptoms of depression” and “older adults.” “Effective” and “reducing” are not main concepts. They are support words that qualify main concepts but in this topic they have no meaning on their own.

Matching synonyms to main concepts Identifying the main concepts is the first step to the effective search. The next step is to figure out related terms, or synonyms, for each of your major concepts. Why is this important? Because humans, unlike machines, tend to use different words to describe the same object or phenomenon. For example, here in Australia you might say "boot" but in America they prefer to say "trunk"; same object ‐ different words to describe it. This happens in scholarly literature as well, and if you are using only one term to search for literature on your topic your chances of finding relevant sources will be limited. To boost your chances you'd need to include more synonyms in your search. Example: Does the use of dolls with Alzheimer’s patients reduce anxiety Main concept

Synonyms

Alzheimer’s

psychogeriatric dementia therapeutic dolls therapeutic play behaviours of concern attachment needs

Dolls Anxiety

In this example, the Population/Problem is Alzheimer’s. The Intervention is dolls, and the Outcome is anxiety. Being able to identify and correctly match synonyms to searchable concepts is the first step towards combining search terms in your search strategy.

Applying Boolean operators After identifying main concepts and synonyms, you’re ready to combine all these terms to make a search strategy. All synonyms for the main concepts will be combined with the Boolean operator OR. Different concepts will be combined with a Boolean operator AND.

The example below is based on the research question “Discuss the benefits of meditation for children with Attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).” There are 3 main concepts in 3 columns with corresponding synonyms: Children

Meditation

kids

AND

mindfulne ss

ADH D

AND

Attention deficit disorder

OR youth s

OR

OR

yoga

hyperactive

How Boolean operators work When you are combining synonyms with OR you are telling the search engine to retrieve articles that contains either of the synonyms. Using OR will always mean retrieving more results. When you are using AND between your main concepts you are telling the search engine to search for an overlap between the terms. In other words, the articles must contain all the terms that you are searching for. Using AND will always reduce the number of results.

children

OR

children

AND meditation

kids

OR

RESULTS youths

AND ADHD

RESULTS

Boolean operators Example: Older adults' perceptions of water‐based exercises The Boolean operator AND is used to combine main concepts of the research question to search for an overlap between them: older adults AND perceptions AND water‐based exercises The Boolean operator OR is used between synonyms to search for alternative terms describing the population group 'older adults': older adults OR elderly OR senior citizens

Syntax Using synonyms will help you to expand your search. Another way to make sure that you are retrieving as many relevant sources as possible is to use truncation. By inserting asterisk (*) after the stem of the word (e.g., school*) you will tell the search engine to retrieve all possible endings of this word (schools, schooling, schooled). Instead of typing all these words into your search as synonyms you can use a shortcut ‐ truncation. One thing to be aware when truncating is that the asterisk has to be placed in the right place. For example, to search for words like swollen and swelling one can be tempted to truncate at sw*. However, truncating at sw* will retrieve anything between swan and swum. The best way to search for these two words is to type them in individually as two search terms. When you have a few main concepts with a few synonyms each you may consider combining them in brackets to tell the search engine the right sequence of action: search for all synonyms first and then search for an overlap between them: (kids OR youth) AND (mindfulness OR yoga) AND (ADHD OR hyperactivity) Using brackets in your search is called nesting. Syntax

Truncation

Nesting

Description Replaces any characters that may follow. Use truncation to find different endings for your search terms. Tells the search engine the correct sequence of action, first search for OR then for AND.

What you type in What you get

School*

(kids OR youth) AND (mindfulness OR yoga)

Schools Schooli ng schoole d

more results

Applying search syntax The most effective search strategy for the topic, “Older adults' perceptions of water‐based exercises” is: (older adult* OR elderly OR senior citizen*) AND (attitude* OR perception*) AND (water‐based exercise* OR aquatic activit*) This search strategy incorporates synonyms for each of the main concepts and applies truncation correctly to each term. Note that all groups of synonyms that are connected with OR are kept together in brackets, with AND between each concept. This type of search is called a nested search.

Searching in different tools Earlier in this module you learned about what different tools are good for. You also familiarised yourself with the Boolean operators and nesting. Now you are ready to combine these skills together by learning how to adjust your approach to searching in each individual search tool. Google Google is constantly improving its ability to understand natural language; that is why you can search in Google just by typing in your request as you would ask a human. On the back‐end, however, Google is using Boolean operators to combine all the words that you type in with AND. It also automatically searches for synonyms for each of these words. And there are other tricks you might want to try in order to make your search more specific: Search operator

What it does

““

“Healthcare” Search for an exact word or phrase

OR (uppercas e)

Examples

“Health care”

Search for either term

“Healthcare” OR “Health care”

Exclude a term from your search results

Burns ‐sunburns

site:

Search within a particular website

“patient safety” site: health.nsw.gov.au

site:

Search within a domain, e.g. educational websites, government websites, etc.

_

Health funding site:.gov.au

Australia: Government site:.gov.au Academic: site:.edu.au United Kingdom: Government site:.gov.uk Academic: site:.ac.uk

-site:

United States: Government site:.gov. Academic: site:.edu Exclude a website or a domain from your search results

depression – site:. en.wikipedia.or g (to exclude Wikipedia

articles)

Restrict your search to a particular filetype

filetype:

Practice quidelines filetype:pdf

Search for a definition of a Define:polypharmacy term

define:

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a multidisciplinary database that indexes scholarly literature on websites. It includes works such as journal articles, academic books, conference papers, theses, and reports. Logging in to Google Scholar from the Library’s database page will give you access links to full‐ text articles from subscription databases. Search Google Scholar as you would Google. To improve your search results, you can use these operators Operator allintitle:

site:

What it does Searches all terms in the title of the article Searches within a particular website

What you type in allintitle: meditation child ADHD meditation child ADHD site:.org

Once you identify a relevant article, click the following links to Link/icon Cited by… Related articles

What it does Find other relevant sources citing this article Find other similar articles Copy the citation for your references – check the citation accuracy before including the article in your work

See Google Scholar Help for more information and tips.

PubMed PubMed is an example of a specialised subject database. It is a free version of the Medline database that indexes biomedical literature from disciplines including medicine, nursing, dentistry, health care systems, and preclinical sciences. To search for research on your topic, enter terms as you would in Google (PubMed defaults to placing AND between your terms). Your terms are automatically mapped to find matches in different fields of Medline records. You can see how the mapping works by expanding the Search details box.

To find primary research articles, select any of the customised Article types filter options e.g. clinical trials or randomized control trials. Once you identify a relevant article, open the record to: Link/icon Cited by… Similar articles

What it does Find other relevant sources citing this article Find other similar articles

Some articles are available in full text via the PubMed Central repository. To check if the Library provides access to the full text of an article, copy the PubMed ID number (numerals only) into Library Search.

For help and tips, see PubMed’s videos on You Tube.

Library Search Library Search provides access to the Library’s print and online collections via a single platform. As such, Library Search is an ideal search tool for discovering what is available on your topic. Remember to sign in to Library Search before starting your search. This will allow you to: − see results that are only available to USyd staff and students − request items held at other USyd campuses or institutions

To help you find what you need quickly, Library Search has several filter options for refining a search. For example, you can filter Library Search results to only show peer‐reviewed journal articles or certain content types, such as books. Once you identify a relevant journal article, click on the following icons to: See Library Search FAQs for more tips. Link/icon

What it does Find more recent sources citing this article Find other relevant sources cited in this article Copy the citation for your references – check the citation accuracy before including the article in your work

Searching by citation chaining An alternative way of finding relevant results is by chaining citations. Watch the video on page H15 to learn how you can do this in a multidisciplinary database called Scopus.

Referencing fundamentals

Now that you know how to search for relevant, recent and authoritative information let's talk about how to use it properly in your assignments. Citing and referencing are the important attributes of academic honesty in modern science. Because science is built on evidence not opinions, it relies on peer review and peer criticism to ensure reproducibility and avoid bias. And to make sure your peers have access to evidence that underpin your research you need to cite and reference your sources. You will need to consult with your lecturer regarding the style you are required to use. What is citing Citing is a process of identifying an appropriate piece of evidence, an idea or an argument and including it in the right place in a written paper to support one’s arguments or conclusions, or to argue against. The process of citing results in a citation, which can take a form of a direct quote, and also can be woven into the text in a seamless way, or paraphrased. Direct quotes are taken from the source and repeated word to word in your own writing. They need to be put in quotation marks. If exceeding three lines or 40 words of text, direct quotes need to be indented. In both cases, indicate the page number where the quote comes from (if applicable). Only quote directly if you want to preserve or convey the original sound of the source which would be distorted by paraphrasing. Otherwise, paraphrasing should be your default option. Example: Rural family physicians identified limitations in their knowledge as a barrier to caring for patients with deme timer’s and Alzheimer’s”. Note that in this case there is no page number next to the quote because it's coming from an interview transcript. Source: Constantinescu, A., Li, H., Yu, J., Hoggard, C., & Holroyd‐Leduc, J. (2018). Exploring Rural Family Physicians’ Challenges in Providing Dementia Care: A Qualitative Study. Canadian Journal on Aging / La Revue Canadienne Du Vieillissement, 37(4), 390‐399. doi:10.1017/S0714980818000417

Paraphrasing is expressing someone else's idea in different words. To paraphrase effectively: − use your own words and writing style, i.e. different sentence structures, to reflect the original ideas − put quotation marks around original phrases that are reused verbatim − indicate the source of the original idea in a reference Compare the following quote with two examples of paraphrasing: Scientists have known for a while now that cancer metastasis — especially when it involves spreading a great distance to another part of the body — is a very inefficient process and that many cells die along the way. This is...