2. Locate the Evidence

 

 

Once you’ve identified your question, you need to plan your search.

 

First pick out the main words or phrases that describe what you’re looking for. Then consider synonyms (different terms with the same or similar meaning) and related terms that might be used to describe the words and phrases you’ve identified.

 

These words and phrases, including the synonyms, are your search terms.

 

If your search terms include phrases, you may be able to use quotation marks to make sure the phrase is searched for rather than just the individual words that make up your phrase. For example, if you use "older people" rather than older people, your results will be a lot more specific. You may also be able to truncate your search terms using wildcards (usually *) to make sure all variants of your terms are searched for. For example, disab* would find disabled, disability, disabilities and so on.

 

*Check the 'Help' pages on search engines and databases to find out the best way to search them*

 

North Team B’s question is ‘What impact does assistive technology have on quality of life for people living at home?’

 

The main words and phrases are: assistive technology, quality of life, people.

 

Synonyms/related terms include:

Next you need to think about how you want to limit your search.

 

Are you interested in everything you can find relating to your question, or do you just want material published in the last couple of years, or published in the UK, or available online? Are you looking for books, or journal articles, or research reports?

 

Once you start searching, you might need to limit your search if you find loads of relevant results, or you may need to expand your search (for example, searching for material published over a wider time period) if you don’t find enough that looks relevant.

 

 

Boolean searching is a way of combining your search terms to limit or broaden your search. Most search engines and databases have their own way of doing this, but it’s useful to know the general principle.

 

Combining your search terms using AND limits your search to results containing all your search terms. For example, assistive technology AND quality of life would find everything containing references to assistive technology and quality of life.

 

Combining your search terms using OR broadens your search to results containing one or more of your search terms. For example, telecare OR telehealth OR telemedicine would find everything containing references to telecare, or telehealth, or telemedicine, or all of them.

 

You can use brackets to group your terms to show the relationship between them. For example: (assistive technology OR telecare) AND (quality of life OR well-being) AND (old OR disabled)

 

 

The internet is a great source of research evidence, but it helps to know a bit more about where to start looking.

 

Search engines are an obvious starting point, and are a great way of finding out ‘what’s out there’ on your topic. They are an easy way to locate specific organisations relevant to your search, like charities, and a good way to find ‘grey’ literature that might not be included in academic databases, like research reports published by charities or local authorities.

 

You can use them to search specific websites if the search engine on the website isn’t very good (for example, in Google, type in your search term and then type site: and the address of the website (you don’t need the www.) – try: older people site:dh.gov.uk or sensory impairment site:ageconcern.org.uk

 

However, you can end up with thousands of hits, and anyone can add anything to the internet, so you have no guarantees about how reliable or trustworthy the information you find is.

 

So, it’s also useful to know about some alternatives:

 

Electronic databases contain the bibliographic details (author, date, publication, publisher, place of publication) of journal articles. They may also contain details of books and reports. They usually provide an abstract telling you more about the publication, and may include links to the full text of the publication if it’s available online.

 

Subject gateways are collections of internet resources grouped by subject. Editors or subject specialists have usually compiled academic subject gateways, so they are a useful source of relevant and authoritative information.

 

Organisations such as charities, research bodies and local authorities often publish research findings on their websites, and government websites also contain useful policy and research information. The websites of newspapers and magazines also often contain the full text of their articles.

 

Most libraries make their library catalogues available online, so if you’re struggling to find the evidence you’re after, why not see if your local library can help?

 

To locate evidence on assistive technology, North Team B decided to split the different sources between them and each spend an hour searching their chosen source.

 

Jayne said she’d just use Google to see what she could find. Jake said he’d have a look on the Social Care Online database. Erica chose to look at CSIP’s Telecare LIN web pages, Debbie decided to look at government websites, and Ben said he’d look at the local university library catalogues.