Why use that database?

A module done by some of our students in nursing and midwifery involves an assignment, in which students need to find a peer reviewed paper to critically appraise.

One thing students have to do is choose a peer reviewed paper - see separate post "Is this peer reviewed?" for a discussion of that.

Another thing is to explain and justify their choice of databases.

Is "the librarian told me about it" or "we covered it in a library class" a good enough reason?     In the spirit of evidence based practice, where expert opinion (and I flatter myself) is at the base of the pyramid, I think it is not.

So, how to choose?

First, I think, is the idea that you would use a structured database like Cinahl or Medline, and not something simpler to use like Google Scholar or even Google, or even choosing a paper you saw in the media or social media.   

If you choose a structured database, you can conduct a structured, deliberate, search, having more control over what you are looking for.  You choose the words and phrases you will use, to increase the likelihood of finding papers on the precise subject you are interested in.    And you are using keywords, and not natural language searching, so you know how things are being found.   You know where the search is being done (titles, abstracts, keywords, or places you choose) and you know where the database is looking (a defined set of journals).

Then you choose the database on the basis of the subjects and types of material it covers.    For any topic in their subject (and I did give them this opinion in a class), Cinahl is the place to go, because it indexes a wider range of journals in nursing and allied health than other databases. 

But you could choose a second place, depending on your topic, as there are other databases that concentrate on related subjects. For us these are:

Mental health - APA PsycInfo

Medical practice, microbiology, genetics - PubMed (or Medline)

Childbirth, antenatal care, postnatal care, maternal health - MIDIRS (which we have as Maternity and Infant Care Database)

And if you want to venture outside the health literature, we have Web of Science and Scopus, which I think are useful for social science or education topics (and psychology as well).  Those two will also pick up conference material, and in Scopus' case, books.

All of this carries the warning that if you want literature published in the Global South, then you will need to look outside these "standard" databases into things like SciELO, African Journals Online and Global Index Medicus.  As I have documented elsewhere, the "standard" ones are not so good at indexing journals from the Global South (by which I mean Central and South America, Asia, Africa).

And for our students, there is the possibility of using NHS databases if you particularly wanted British journals about nursing (British Nursing Index) or material about health management (HMIC).  Or, since very recently, Social Policy and Practice for those subjects.

I did have a quick look in the books for arguments about database choice, and Helen Aveyard's Doing a literature review in health and social care (Aveyard, 2014, p.82) does say "for those undertaking a nursing-based literature review, CINAHL would be an appropriate start".  She goes on to list some of the other databases you might consider, and recommends talking to a librarian for advice and also, of course, to see what you have access to.    You, reading this post, may have other databases we do not have, and of course we may have access to things you do not.

Reference

Aveyard, H. (2014) Doing a literature review in health and social care: a practical guide. 3rd edn. Maidenhead, McGraw-Hill Education.