WGST/HPS 336: Perspectives in Women's Health

Trying to access library resources online? Follow the instructions on the Online Access to Library Resources page to access library databases, articles, and ebooks, both on-campus and off-campus.

1. How do I search for my topic?

• Identify the main ideas of your topic and use those as your search words
• Each article has tags assigned to it, words or shorts phrases that make them searchable - you want your search words to match those tags
• Words like factors, effects, issues, relationships are usually not used as tags - don't include them as search words

Example: The topic for your research project is: The medicalization of female genital cutting

• A search about this topic could be: medicaliz* female "genital cutting"
• Add an * to the end of a word stem to search for all words that begin with that word stem
  • medical* will search for medicalize, medicalizing, and medicalization
• Put a phrase in quotation marks to search for its words as a phrase, not separate words
  • "genital cutting" searches for genital cutting as a phrase, not separate words

2. How do I focus the search hits to just recent, academic journal articles?

•  Use Refine Your Search options to focus your search results to just peer-reviewed articles
• Peer-reviewed articles:
  • Check the box beside Limit to articles from peer-reviewed publications
  • Check the box beside Journal article under Content Type
• Current/Recent articles:
  • Under Publication Date, move the scroll bar over to 2000 to present

3. How do I know my search words match the tags assigned to articles about my research question?

• Look through the Subject Terms (tags) under Refine Your Search, and see if they match your search words 
• Example: gential mutilation and female circumcision are also used as tags for articles about this topic
• New Search: medicaliz* AND female AND ("genital cutting" OR "genital mutilation" OR circumcision)
  • AND combines your search words to find only items tagged with all the search words
  • OR combines your search words to find items tagged with any of the search words
• If you only have one search box, combine your main ideas using AND then combine each main idea with its synonyms in parentheses ( ) using OR 
• Subjects Terms (tags) also help you identify the specific issues and approaches for your topic

4. I can't find anything on my research topic. What do I do?

• The search words you're using to describe your topic may not match the tags assigned to articles on your research question
  • Try different search words that mean the same thing
• There may not be research tying your main ideas together yet.
  • Try searching for your main ideas separately and linking their findings together
• If you've found one article that's relevant for your topic, look through the sources in its References list to see if any of them are also relevant to your research