Before you begin searching Assia or the British Nursing Index (BNI), it is recommended that you identify appropriate keywords to describe your topic.
For help on this, please see the Literature Searching LibGuide. The section on 'Planning your search' will provide more detail on identifying relevant terms and links to helpful templates and frameworks you can use to structure your search.
For more in-depth searching, the Systematic reviews: finding and managing the evidence LibGuide is also a useful starting point.
You can follow the steps to building your search from this video demonstration. This is a section of the 'How to search Healthcare databases using ProQuest' video which is on the Home tab of this guide.
If you have multiple keywords, it is best to search for them each individually. The Advanced search option on ProQuest gives three search boxes to input your terms. The default is to search for articles with all of these terms. Enter your search term or terms in the search boxes and click 'Search'. All of the articles that refer to your search terms will appear in the search history below the search box. You can add search boxes, change and repeat this step until you have searched for all of your relevant terms.
Please note: it is best to avoid words that are too general or too abstract, as this will compromise both the number and relevancy of results you retrieve. Such words include: the, a, in, of, or, as well as words such as discuss, importance, analyse etc.
Authors often use different words to describe subject areas. For this reason, it is important to include synonyms, phrases, UK/US spellings and different word endings in your search strategy.
Tip: If you have already found or know about an article that perfectly matches your topic, it can be very effective to look at the terms used in their title or abstract and apply them to your own search strategy. This will help you to locate more articles like it.
You will find additional helpful tips for keyword searching by clicking on the other tabs in the 'build a search strategy' box.
The initial screen of Assia and BNI is set to the basic search view. Select Advanced Search from the options above the search box
Use Advanced Search to create a more structured query, searching across different fields. Enter your search term, then use the pull-down menus to the right to select the search fields you want to target, and between each row select Boolean (AND/OR) operators to connect your search terms.
IMPORTANT: The search default is set to Anywhere. Anywhere searches the full bibliographic record (all indexed fields) including the full text.
You can limit your search to items containing Full text from ProQuest and Peer Reviewed items to only find documents reviewed by subject matter experts. Use the Publication date menu to target a date range or a specific date.
From the Advanced Search page you may find a link to the thesaurus feature. A thesaurus is an alphabetical listing of all the subject terms in a single database, used to classify and organize information for that database. The thesaurus shows relationships between terms such as synonyms or related terms, and hierarchical arrangements such as broader terms, or narrower terms. Most ProQuest databases have an associated thesaurus.
Once you select the Thesaurus link, you will have an option to search for terms containing the word you have entered or beginning with the word you have entered. From there you can click on the subject terms to show the relationships with other terms. You can then select the subject terms that you would like to add to your search.
The Command Line Search is also accessible from the Advanced Search page. When you select Command Line (to the right of Advanced search) you will see search tools and tips advice on the right hand side of the screen.
When searching multiple databases together, the most common search limits to appear on the Advanced Search page include:
Source type - restrict your search to documents from one or more source types—such as magazines, newspapers, or trade journals. The list of source types will vary depending on the databases you are currently searching.
Document type - restrict your search to one or more document types—such as articles, audio/video clips, or poems. The list of document types will vary depending on the databases you are currently searching.
Language - restrict your search to documents published in one or more languages—such as Arabic, German, or Sanskrit. The list of languages will vary depending on the databases you are currently searching.
Additional or altogether different limits may appear depending on the databases that you have chosen to search.
From the Results page options, you can adjust the sort order, the number of items per page, excluding duplicate documents, and show additional search terms.
You can make your searches more focussed by using phrase searching.
When two or more words commonly appear next to each other, enclose them in double quotation marks (" ") to ensure that the results refer to the specific concept in which you are interested. For example: "physical therapy"
Be aware that some phrases can be expressed in different word orders, for example, " active labour management" vs "active management of labour" and you will need to use both examples to capture every article on this topic.
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*
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The asterisk (*) is the Truncation character, used to replace one or more characters. The truncation character can be used at the end (right-hand truncation), or in the middle of a word. The maximum number of characters that will be retrieved is 5. Example: Searching for econom* will find economY, economICS, economICAL, etc. Limited truncation: a number can be entered next to the asterisk to define how extensive the truncation should be. The max number supported is 20. This way the default limit of max 5 characters can be overcome. Example: econom[*2] will find economY, economIC but not economIST, i.e. will replace up to 2 characters only An asterisk can also be used within the double quotes to account for the retrieval of plurals, for example. Example: "economic value*" can help retrieving also the plural "economic values" (Please note: Exact quotes plus the truncation on a single word don’t work. With "econom*" the truncation won’t execute). |
?
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The question mark symbol (?) is the Wildcard character, used to replace any single character, either inside or at the right end of the word. One single ? will retrieve only one more character, ?? won't retrieve less than 2 more characters, etc. Example: Searching for t?re will find tire, tyre, tore, etc. |
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Use a hyphen to indicate a range when searching numerical fields, such as Publication date. Example: YR(2005-2008) |
<> |
Use the less than or greater than symbols to indicate before/after or smaller/larger or less/more when searching numerical fields, such as the Publication date. Example: YR(>2008) will located documents published after 2008 |
*Note: When using the asterisk (*) or wildcard (?) in your search, any terms retrieved using either of these are not considered when sorting your results based on relevance. This is because there is no way for ProQuest to assess the relevance of these terms to your research as the term itself is not exact. For example, your search on 'bio*' could return occurrences of any of all of these terms: 'bionic' or 'biosynthesis' or 'biodegrade' or 'biographic.' One, some, all, or none could be relevant to your search.
Proximity and adjacency operators are used to broaden and narrow your search.
NEAR/#n/# |
Finds documents where the search terms are separated by up to a certain number of words of each other (either before or after). Note: If you don't specify a number after the slash, NEAR will default to maximum 4 intervening words between terms Example: computer NEAR/3 careers computer and careers can be separated by up to 3 intervening words retrieves career in the computer industry |
PRE/#p/# |
Finds documents where the search terms are separated by up to a certain number of words of each other in the specified order. Note: If you don't specify a number after the slash, PRE will apply a default value of max 4 intervening words . Example: "business management" PRE education = "business management" PRE/4 education "pre" p/1 war retrieves pre-war but also pre-world-war (Note: to search PRE or NEAR as search terms, put them between quotes.) |
EXACT.e |
Used primarily for searching specific fields, like Subject, EXACT looks for your exact search term in its entirety, rather than as part of a larger term. Example: EXACT(“higher education”) in the Subject field SU.EXACT(“higher education”) |
Tick the boxes of the lines of the searches you wish to combine (e.g. 1 and 2) and then select AND or OR using the logic below, before clicking on Combine:
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stress OR anxiety
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Documents that discuss either stress or anxiety |
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stress AND anxiety |
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Documents that discuss |
Your search might look something like this:
To combine search sets you need to use square brackets around the numbers
To the left of the results page and records, you'll see the option to Sort and use Applied filters.
7. The Sort menu controls the sort order of the records that appear in the results page. Relevance is the default sort order, but your administrator can choose a different default order. Relevance is determined by an algorithm that factors in the number of time your search terms appear in the record as well as where in the record your search terms appear. Other possible sort options include oldest first and most recent first.
8. Use the Applied filters section to apply additional limits (also known as filters or facets) to refine your results. The limits are pulled from the list of available indexed/searchable fields that appear in the current result set. Some of the main limits you can expect to find (each search and database is different so you can expect different limits to display) include source, publication title, subject, language, and date.
