BOOLEAN TERMINOLOGY

Question

The choice of Boolean terminology can markedly affect your search returns. Select a topic related to your area of practice, and select two scholarly databases to find information on the topic. Describe the search. What key words did you use? How many articles did your initial search yield? How did you narrow or expand the search? How many articles did you find once you narrowed or expanded the search? Summarize the results from the search.
Discussion on academic level for graduate nursing program. Emergency nurse practice.

Sample paper

Boolean Terminology

The topic under consideration in this study is the nurses’ role with relation to informed consent. The scholarly databases selected include PubMed, an online collection of peer reviewed journal articles and other forms of publications, and the American Nursing Association database, containing books, journals, and other useful resources. The initial search in PubMed database yielded 57,777 articles. This search utilized the keywords “informed consent.” In order to narrow the research further, the second search utilized the keywords “nurses’ role in informed consent and journal.” This search was narrow and specifically requiring search results for journal articles only. The refined search yielded 72 articles only, all of which are journal articles relating to the topic area. Narrowing the search results is important since it enables one to identify the articles that best describe the topic of interest.

The second search utilized the keywords “informed consent or decision making or ethics”, which yielded 29 results. In order to expand the search results, the keywords “informed consent in health and social care and journal” were used. The search gave 58 search results. This indicates that Boolean searching is useful in enhance search results by either narrowing on search results or expanding the search results. Boolean searching can enable one to narrow down on specific resources such as journals, articles, or publications relating to the topic of interest (Notess, 2006). As such, it is a critical tool for researchers and learners alike.

Reference

Notess, G. R. (2006). Teaching Web search skills: Techniques and strategies of top trainers. Medford, NJ: Information Today Inc.