CINAHL Complete

As you know, the health sciences use very specialized vocabulary, and the same thing can be referred to with several different terms.

The concept of stroke, for example, could be referred to as stroke, cerebrovascular accident, or CVA. Does it matter which term you use when searching CINAHL? Yes!

Librarians organize and classify information according to what's known as a controlled vocabulary. This means that we consistently use the same term to describe the same thing. If half the articles were described with the term stroke and the other half with CVA, you'd have to perform two searches to find everything relating to the same concept.

So how do you know which term is the correct one to use?

The CINAHL Headings feature of the databases allows you to find out which term the database "prefers," as well as construct a search from those preferred terms and subheadings. You can also use the Headings' "tree view" to get a sense of where your concept fits in with other medical concepts. 

Scroll down for tips on interpreting the way terms are displayed in CINAHL Headings, and for using the Headings to construct a database search. The boxes on the right provide a handout explaining MeSH (Medical Subject Headings, used in the MEDLINE database and similar to CINAHL Headings), and a video tutorial on how to use both CINAHL Headings and MeSH.

To access this feature, click on CINAHL Headings from the menu at the top left of the CINAHL home screen:

On the search screen, type in your search term. Leave the bubble on Relevancy Ranked, and hit 'Browse.' In this example, we want to see if cerebrovascular accident is the term we should use to look for articles on stroke:

If your term is not in the controlled vocabulary, your results will tell you to Use: [Preferred term], instead.

In this case, we find that stroke, not cerebrovascular accident, is the preferred term:

For more information on what a term refers to, click on the caption in the Scope column, and an explanatory note will pop up. Below is the Scope note for stroke:

Now that you know the preferred term for the database, you can construct a search right from the Headings screen by following these steps:

1. Select the checkbox for the term or terms you'd like to search.

2. A menu of subheadings will appear to the right; these are specific aspects of the main term that you might like to focus on. Select one or more subheadings.

3. Click on the green Search Database button on the right side of the screen.

In this example, I've selected stroke and the Nursing subheading:

This search brings back over 750 article results!

 755 results are really too many, though. You can use the filters on the page to filter results, or you can click on the Advanced Search link. It will take you back to the Advanced Search page with the same search phrase you constructed (MH "Stroke/NU") still filled in. You can reset any limiters you need from there.

 

In addition to discovering the preferred terms to search the database, CINAHL Headings are also useful to give you a sense of where your research topic fits in with other topics. 

When you search for something in the Headings and click on a term, you'll get what's called a tree view for that term.

In the tree view below, the terms nervous system diseases is broadest term under which stroke could fit - it's like the trunk of the tree.

As you go down the list, the terms in the tree get narrower and more specific - like the trunk of a tree giving way to thinner branches. So stroke is a narrower term for cerebrovascular disorders, which in turn is a narrower term for brain diseases, and so on until you get back to the broadest term. We can also see that there is one narrower term for stroke: Stroke, Lacunar.

The terms that are indented at the same level are related terms. Carotid artery diseases, stroke, and vascular headache are all types of cerebrovascular disorders, so they are related to one another.

How would you use this tree view?

• If you are getting lots of results, you could narrow your results down to a manageable number by searching again with a narrower term.

• Or, if you are not getting as many results as you'd like, you could use a broader term in your next search.

• Perform more than one search with related terms in order to get as many results as possible on a larger topic.

This document describes how to use CINAHL Headings, as well as the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) available in MEDLINE, another medical database available through SanJac. The document will open as a Word file, which you can print or save.

This video tutorial, made by EBSCO, is also available on the CINAHL Headings or the MeSH search page in the databases. About 5 minutes in length.