These are a number of tricks you can use to enhance your CINAHL searches and help you to find information you need for research.
Knowing how to use searching techniques will help narrow or broaden your search when a topic is too limited.
Boolean Operators link concepts and are used to broaden or narrow search:
AND - finds results with your all search terms. AND narrows your search (i.e. get fewer citations)
OR - finds results with any of your search terms. Or broadens your search (i.e. get more results)
NOT - finds results with only one of your search terms. NOT narrorws your search (i.e. get fewer citations).
For more help, refer to Boolean Operators guide to get detailed information.
Truncation is a search method in which symbols are used in place of letters or words. The purpose of truncation is to help broaden the search (i.e. helps get more citations).
See below how it works:
In CINAHL, the asterisk (*) represents any group of characters, including no character. Use * symbol at the end of the root term.
Example: prevent* finds prevent, preventative, prevented, preventing, etc., or smoke* finds smoke, smoker, smoking, etc.
Searching for phrases narrows your search (i.e. gets fewer citations). See below:
In CINAHL, enclose the phrase using double quotation marks (i.e. "shift handoff") in order to find citations that have those words in the exact order.
Examples:
Limits allows you to restrict searches to your specific topic. For example, you may want to limit to English language, articles published within the last 5 years. CINAHL allows you to limit your topic searches.
Some other limiters would be: