Health

It's really important in the Health and Social Care field to find good quality, up to date literature and evidence! As it's so important to find the best evidence and literature for your topic, you will need to develop good research skills to enable you to do this. The resources in this section will help you to develop these skills: from constructing a 'comprehensive' research strategy, applying it to the different databases to find your research articles, to evaluating and using it in your work. 

You can find the relevant databases in the above 'Journal Databases' tab.

You may also need to use evidence based resources to find information for your work. You can find these in the Evidence Based Research Resources Tab: https://libguides.shu.ac.uk/health/evidenceresources

Also in this section is information and help on topics such as understanding research methodology, critical appraisal tools, glossaries of terms, and keeping a record of your research. You can also find help and support for searching for the evidence and academic writing. Follow the links on the left hand side to navigate to each section.

Happy hunting!

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If you are new to researching, particularly in Health and Social Care, you may question why you need to engage so much with research. Well, it's important to keep up to date, both academically and professionally, and the best way to do that is to read the current research around your topic, area of interest or working environment!

This section begins with the basics of conducting research in the Health and Social Care fields. SearchStart is a good place to begin, as it is easy to follow and has a lot of information about how to start out on your research journey:

Search Start

This interactive online resource can help you to find and use information for your academic work. Here you will find advice from the library for new students on how to find the right resources for your course work at university. You will also find links to advice from other services in the university to help you work and study. There are videos and interactive quizzes to help you check your understanding along the way.

To support you at all the stages of your research, we have a handy reading list of titles covering researching in this field, compiled by the Subject Librarians who support HWLS. All of the books are available from Hallam Library and all are available in online formats. Most of these titles begin at the basics so it's a good idea to get yourself into a couple of them before you start!

https://rl.talis.com/3/shu/lists/3F5A16B3-03AC-5185-6459-997096A93B41.html

There are also some useful videos introducing you to some of the key databases in this link: Getting started with databases

SearchStart is a good introduction to how to search but for students on health and social care courses you need to have more in-depth skills.

The resources in this section focus specifically on the skills you need to search for evidence comprehensively and effectively. These skills are transferable across all the databases you will need to use. Remember, you should search across a range of databases relevant to your research topic, to ensure you are capturing all of the available evidence and literature.

The videos in this section will help you to develop the skills you need in finding and evaluating your evidence.

• Section 1 takes you through the process, from identifying your keywords, to applying the techniques you need to use to a database search.
• Section 2 looks at evaluating what you find.
• Section 3 identifies two techniques you may find helpful in unpicking your topic to form your search strategy.
• Section 4 is to help you if you are asked to produce a PRISMA flow diagram to evidence your research strategy (NB: you may not need to do this - always check your module document)

Planning your Research Strategy Workbook!

To compliment these resources, you can use our handy workbook to help you work through constructing your research strategy. The workbook is called Planning Your Research Strategy and is available below.

Section 1: The Process

These really short videos talk you through the process of constructing a literature search. Beginning with the theory of why you need to use good quality academic resources and the process of searching for literature and evidence, they move through identifying key concepts - which form the basis of your key words and phrases - and onto the resources you need to use to find literature and evidence to support your work.

The theory

Identifying Concepts 

The Resources

Section 2: Evaluating the Evidence

Once you have found your evidence to support your literature review, you will need to evaluate what you have found. Here are some useful resources to help you do that:

Section 3: Searching With PICO or SPIDER

PICO and SPIDER are methodologies you can use to help you identify your research articles. The one you use depend on the type of research you are looking for. The below articles outline how to use two of the most popular research methodologies for Health research - PICO and SPIDER. You may be asked to use them to evidence your research strategy.

Section 4: PRISMA Flow Diagram

You may be asked to create a PRISMA flow diagram to show where you have found your evidence (most likely only for your final research project). These links guide you through creating your PRISMA Flow Diagram:

Background information on PRISMA

You've mastered the basics of constructing a literature search - congratulations! Now you need to think about becoming more systematic and comprehensive in your searching of the resources.

You'll find that you now need to begin refining your research to suit your own needs, and there are some useful tools within the databases to help you do this. This video demonstrates how to apply your search strategy to a specific database (Medline) and then refine your search using the filters within the database:

Searching Comprehensively and Effectively in a Health Database 

Remember! You can use these techniques in any of the specialist databases you need to use, and that these techniques are also transferable into any professional resources you need to use, too.

Using your own key terms, words and phrases is a good start to comprehensive literature searching, but databases are also programmed with their own preferred terms. These appear in the database thesaurus, and it is a good idea to check your keywords and phrases against the database headings. This short video shows you how to do this:

Using CINAHL Headings

Another useful technique to use is Incremental and Citation Searching. More commonly known as 'Pearl Growing' or 'Snowballing' because you are using one piece of research as a building block to find other research related to, or attached to, that piece. It can be particularly useful if you are struggling to find research on your topic. This video shows you how to apply this technique using one of the multi-disciplinary databases, Scopus:

Quick Wins: Growing Your Research Using Pearl Growing/Snowballing

This technique can also be used in Google Scholar (https://library.shu.ac.uk/googlescholar.html). Google Scholar is a final resort to ensure you have collected all the relevant literature for your topic!

Subject Librarian Support

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This guide takes you through a step-by-step process of finding and selecting the evidence for your literature review in the science and health subjects. Divided into 12 steps, this guide will help you get the most out of doing your literature review, whether that is a stand-alone piece of work, as part of a wider project that involves writing a literature review as part of the process.

You can either follow the guide from beginning to end, or select the part of the process you want to know more about or upskill in. 

The guide will help you:

• find information
• apply a structured approach to research
• help minimise missing key papers
• save time!

In the course of your studies, you may need to find other types of literature to help with your discussion or argument. These resources are commonly referred to as 'grey literature' and can be found in a number of places.

The term 'grey literature' normally refers to any resource which is not an academic publication, or from a commercial source. So for example, this could be policy documents, government reports, internal guidance, NICE guidelines, etc.

Searching for grey literature can be very hard and frustrating as it is not generally brought together in one consistent place, such as with academic literature in the databases. However, there are lots of sources of grey literature that you can use:

• Databases such as Web of Science, SCOPUS and Proquest are good starting points for grey literature.
• National Grey Literature Collection (funded by Health Education England) holds the hard copy grey literature collection of the former North Grey Literature Service. It is collecting an increasing range of electronic Grey Literature. The collection is delivered by Stockport Foundation NHS Trust. Search the collection here: http://allcatsrgrey.org.uk/wp/

You can also use your professional body sites for your profession-specific evidence. And of course, there is also Google for anything that isn't academic articles!

It's really important when you begin your research to keep a record of where you found it. After all, you may want to revisit it and if you don't know where you got it from, this will be difficult to do! Also, your tutors and peers may want to find your resource, too. Keeping a record of your search strategies is helpful, not only for this, but as evidence that your academic work is developed using good quality resources.

You may also need to replicate your research strategy as part of your assignment. Your assessment brief will give you more information about how to present this, if necessary.

The best way to keep a record is to create a table where you can logically map your research strategy. Here is an example of how your table could look:

PRISMA Flow Diagram

You may also need to produce a PRISMA flowchart (mostly for final year students). You can find information on how to do that here: http://prisma-statement.org/PRISMAStatement/FlowDiagram

How to complete your PRISMA Flow Diagram: http://www.prisma-statement.org/PRISMAStatement/PRISMAEandE.aspx

You may also want to look at the section covering PRISMA in this book. It's available online: https://shu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44SHU_INST/hoqs75/alma99608351502501 (you will need to log in with your SHU username and password, or log into MyHallam first).

Article on reporting PRISMA: 

https://shu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44SHU_INST/19st8hg/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_2507146928

Page, McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J. M., Akl, E. A., Brennan, S. E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J. M., Hróbjartsson, A., Lalu, M. M., Li, T., Loder, E. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., … Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ (Online), 372, n71–n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71

These texts introduce you to research methodologies in Health and Social Care, starting with the basics of research methodology, and moving on to topics such as conducting good quality research, ethics, effective research techniques and interpreting your findings.  

In the 'Exploring Research Methodology' section are a couple of really good resources covering all aspects of research methodology in Health and Social Care. There are also a couple of useful glossaries of terms used in Healthcare research that are a good introduction to some of the terminology you will hear and read about.

Reading about Research

Useful introductory text to researching Health and Social Care:

• Doing A Literature Review in Health and Social Care by Aveyard, H 

Why do a literature review? What literature is relevant? How do I appraise my findings? How do I present my literature review? This step-by-step guide simplifies the process of reviewing published literature, provides a guide to searching, appraising and comparing literature, and offers practical tips on writing up.

How to read the papers that you find:

• How to Read an Academic Paper 

TedEd video on how to read an academic paper. This is a very specific skill you need to develop, to be able to make the best use of the information you find in an academic paper. This short video talks you through some tips on how to make sense of the information you are reading.

Research Reading Lists

Here are a couple of reading lists to help you get started with researching and good practice!

• Thinking Like A Researcher Reading List 

  This list contains resources to help you become a confident researcher. There are books, articles and other resources to help you with your research for your academic work.

• Reading List - Research and Study Skills for Nursing, Allied Health Professions and Social Work 

  This is a reading list of online resources you can access to help you with your research.    

Exploring Research Methodology

Sage Research Methods Cases: Medicine and Health

SAGE Research Methods: Medicine & Health collections cover primary clinical and epidemiological research, both interventional and observational, as well as systematic review and meta-analysis. Examples of studies are drawn from across all major medical specialties, as well as public health, nursing, dentistry, health policy, and services research. Really good for learning about the pros and cons of specific types of research!

Also included is the methods map, which allows you to read definitions of key terminology, and discover content relevant to your research project: Methods Map: http://methods.sagepub.com.hallam.idm.oclc.org/methods-map

BMJ Best Practice: Learn Evidence Based Research 

These articles are intended to introduce the key methods of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) such as clarifying a clinical question, designing a search and appraising, synthesising and assessing quality of the evidence.

Glossary of ResearchTerms

• Useful glossary of research terminology from the National Institute of Health Research 

  This glossary covers all of the terminology you will encounter in Health Research, such as confidence intervals, qualitative studies etc.

• NICE - Glossary of Terms 

  This is also a useful glossary of terms from NICE. The glossary gives brief definitions and explanations of the terms used and describes how NICE guidance is produced.

• PubMed Publication Types 

Publication Characteristics (Publication Types) with Scope Notes

2020 MeSH Pubtypes

Critical Appraisal

There are many different critical appraisal tools you can use. Here are a few of the most commonly used:

CASP - Critical Appraisal Skills Programme: https://casp-uk.net/casp-tools-checklists/

Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine: https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/resources/ebm-tools/critical-appraisal-tools

Joanne Briggs Institute: https://jbi.global/critical-appraisal-tools

AMSTAR (for systematic reviews only): https://amstar.ca/

Mixed Methods Appraisal: http://mixedmethodsappraisaltoolpublic.pbworks.com/w/page/24607821/FrontPage

There are others that you can use, for instance the Hawker method:

Hawker S, Payne S, Kerr C, Hardey M, Powell J. Appraising the evidence: reviewing disparate data systematically. Qual Health Res 2002;12:1284–99. 10.1177/1049732302238251 (find online here: 

https://shu.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/44SHU_INST/19st8hg/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_72714869)

You may also be given guidance by your tutors on which method to use. Check your module documents or ask your tutor!

Referencing Your Critical Appraisal Tool

When citing and referencing a critical appraisal tool, use the same format as for a website. For example: 

Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. (2020).  CASP Checklist*. Retrieved from: https://casp-uk.net/casp-tools-checklists/

*reference the checklist you have used, ie CASP Randomised Control Trial Checklist

Are you really being asked to conduct a systematic review, or are you doing an extended literature review with a systematic and comprehensive search strategy? You may be asked to do a 'systematic review', but in reality you are conducting a systematic review of the literature. There's a real difference between the two and you should always check to make sure that you are doing the right thing.

• A systematic review aims to answer a very specific research question, with strict parameters. It is normally done in a group of people with formalised roles and specified research parameters, often outlined in a protocol.
• A systematic literature search is a review of the literature within specified databases in order to collect as much of the evidence available within those resources. You will be expected to demonstrate your search strategy in some way, and to discuss the findings of the published literature.

Before you start, you may want to investigate this article that talks about the difference between a 'systematic review' and a 'systematic literature review', which will help you to identify if yours is a full 'systematic review': https://www.covidence.org/blog/the-difference-between-a-systematic-review-and-a-literature-review/

If you are doing a systematic review, you might want to take a look at these resources which will help you to undertake your systematic review.