Introduction to doing literature searches for students in human nutrition.

1. Source: College of Dieticians of Alberta
Finding Human Nutrition
Information
!
Diane Clark ( AFNS Librarian), September 2014
1

2. Agenda
Where to find and how to use/search for
• Endnote Online
• books & journal articles
• clinical (point of care) nutrition
information
• grey literature

3. Objectives
• Manage your citations with EndNote
• Increase awareness of the range of
resources available in human nutrition
• Construct search strategies to retrieve
resources

4. Endnote
• keep track of citations for your papers
• works in Windows or Mac (using Cite While
You Write program) to include in-text
citations
• web-based
• Library > Databases > web of science

5. Scenario
“You are asked to write a
report about aboriginal
adolescents and their daily
intake of fruit and
vegetables in their diet. The
report will provide the
foundation for a prevention
programme aimed at this
population.”
Where do you start looking for information?

6. Finding books and journal articles on
nutrition & public health
• Books/ebooks – Provide
background/extensive coverage of
a topic, usually at undergraduate
level
• Journal articles – Latest research,
can be at a graduate level, review
articles a good place to start
• First search - Use Library search
box for books, articles, news
(www.library.ualberta.ca)

7. Databases: www.library.ualberta.ca
• Medline via Ovid
•Pubmed
!
•PEN
!
• SCOPUS
!
• Web of Science
!
• CINAHL
!
• Google Scholar (not really a database)

8. Build a good search strategy…
1: State your topic
Food security for aboriginal populations
!
2: Identify your main concepts
Food security and aboriginals
!
3: Determine your search terms -synonyms for each concept
Concept 1: Food security Food insecurity
Concept 2: Aboriginal* Indigenous* Native* Metis ….
!
4: Use truncation/wildcards
food secur* food insecur*
!
5: Assemble your search strategy using Boolean
“Food security” AND (Aboriginal* OR Indigenous* OR
Native*OR Metis* OR Inuit*)

9. Boolean Operators – OR
food
security OR
food
insecurity
food
availability
OR food
access
OR = more results
!
Use OR to combine
similar concepts or
synonyms
Examples of results of searching with OR:

10. Boolean Operators – AND
Food
security
Aboriginal*
OR
Indigenous
OR Metis
AND = less results
!
Use AND to combine
or narrow concepts
Example of one search result using AND:

11. Practice topic
• Methods to evaluate fruit and vegetable
consumption in adolescents
!
!

12. Practice topic
• Methods to evaluate fruit and vegetable consumption in adolescents
!
!
Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3
“fruit AND
vegetable”
adolescen*
teen*
youth
high school*
evaluation
tool
questionnaire
survey*
instrument
scor*
(“fruit* and vegetable*”) AND (adolescen* OR high school* OR teen* ) AND
(tool* OR questionnaire* OR survey* OR score OR scoring OR instrument)

13. General search tips
• Use the truncation symbol * to allow for multiple endings
(eg. obes* will retrieve obese and obesity)
• Put quotation marks around phrases “food security”
• Add the term “review” as an additional concept to your
search in order to find review articles on a topic

14. Clinical nutrition resources
Use “point of care” resources to find summaries of the
evidence on nutrition for particular health conditions
!
• Dynamed (demo)
(http://www.library.ualberta.ca)

15. What is grey literature?
Publications issued by
government, academia,
business, and industry,
in both print and
electronic formats, but
not controlled by
commercial publishing
interests, and where
publishing is not the
primary business activity
of the organization.
(Subramanyan, 1981).

16. Grey literature includes:
• Practice Guidelines*
• Education-related objects (toolkits, curriculums)
• Newsletters and Bulletins
• Research and technical reports*
• Working papers*
• Theses and dissertations
• Government documents*
• Standards and Patents*
• Clinical trial or ongoing research registries
• Fact sheets
• Blogs, emails, listservs, other informal communication
• Conference proceedings and meeting records*
• Statistics and statistical publications

17. Why use grey literature?
• Format (e.g. handbook) might be more appropriate for your
needs than scholarly article
• Often the only record of programs, initiatives or research done
by busy practitioners
• Removing publication bias (positive studies are over-represented
in journals)
• Rapidly published and can provide awareness of upcoming
research
• Sometimes the only available evidence on a topic

18. Examples of Internet grey lit sources
• PHAC’s Canadian Best Practice Portal http://cbpp-pcpe.
phac-aspc.gc.ca/
• Alberta Government nutrition page http://
www.health.alberta.ca/health-info/nutrition.html
• USDS Food and Nutrition Information Centre http://
fnic.nal.usda.gov
• Google Advanced (http://www.google.com/
advanced_search)

19. Why would you look for statistics?
Current and accurate statistics can enhance your
understanding of the communities you serve, and can
provide benchmarking or comparison information.
!
Possible to find statistics on:
• Health behaviours (smoking, drinking)
• Nutrition habits (breastfeeding, veggies)
• Health status
• Social determinants of health
• Demographic information

20. Finding statistics
• Nutrition resource guide
• Many research articles contain statistics. These
can be found by searching for journal articles.
Statistical terms such as incidence, prevalence,
epidemiolog*, survey can be useful to add to your
search.
• Government websites: StatCan, Alberta Health,
Edmonton, etc.
• Stakeholder websites (e.g. NGO’s, disease
associations and professional associations, etc)

21. Nutrition statistics website examples
• Database of Online Health Statistics
http://www.ihe.ca/publications/health-db/
• WHO http://www.who.int/nutrition/
databases/en/

22. Community statistic website examples
• StatCan Census Profiles http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/
census-recensement/2011/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E
• Edmonton crime map http://
crimemapping.edmontonpolice.ca/
• 2012 Edmonton Municipal Census Results (city wide and
by neighbourhood) http://www.edmonton.ca/
city_government/facts_figures/municipal-census-results.
aspx

23. What to do when you aren’t finding
anything…
• Think: who might have
created your perfect
information resource
• Try: other terms, other
sources/grey literature
• Experiment - Persevere
• Ask: for help from faculty,
librarians, peers

24. Questions?
diane.clark@ualberta.ca