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!

Get in touch with us

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. Our resource, 'How To Search', 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:

'How To Search' - basic introduction to searching academic resources

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!

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

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

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

Get in touch with us

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

There is also PRISMA guidance for different types or aspects of systematic reviews. So, for example, if you are doing a scoping review, check this link for the guidance on how to report this: http://www.prisma-statement.org/Extensions/

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

In the 'Exploring Research Methods' section are a couple of really good resources covering all aspects of research methods 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.

These books are good introductions to research methods. It might be useful to read some of them before you begin!

Exploring Research Methods

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.