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NFS 3110 Nutrition Counseling and Education: Databases

This is a course guide for NFS 3110. Here you will find help with Research Articles v. Review Articles, MeSH terms, Databases, and Citations.

Databases and Tutorials

Databases organize information into easily accessible information. They can contain journal articles, journals, eBooks, scholarly articles, and much more. They do not always have full text access to resources but they will always be searchable. 

Databases organize information into easily accessible information. They can contain journal articles, journals, eBooks, scholarly articles, and much more. They do not always have full text access to resources but they will always be searchable.

Databases organize information into easily accessible information. They can contain journal articles, journals, eBooks, scholarly articles, and much more. They do not always have full text access to resources but they will always be searchable. 

"nutrition intervention" OR  "nutrition counseling"

"food log*" OR "daily food intake"

"behavior change" OR "goal-setting" OR Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TTM) OR "stages of change"  OR "realistic goal setting" OR 

"self-efficacy" OR commitment OR "decision making" OR "stimulus control" OR "self-reinforcement" OR "social support" OR "self-management" OR "group session*" OR "self-monitoring" OR "relapse prevention" OR "coping response*" OR "control environment" 

"nutrition education" OR "reading food labels" OR "adapting recipes" OR "menu planning" OR "meal planning" OR "food preparation" OR "food purchasing" OR "healthful eating" OR "food safety" OR nutritional supplement*" OR "nutrient misinformation" OR "nutrient-drug internation*" OR "managing appetite" OR "culturally sensitive intervention*"OR "stimulus control"

"motivational interviewing" OR "health belief model"

"behavior modification" OR "positive reinforcement" OR modeling OR "observational learning" OR "role playing" OR "problem solving" OR "coping skill*"

"weight management" OR "diabetes mellitus" OR "cardiovascular diseases" 

"cognitive-behavioral theory" OR CBT OR "cue reduction" OR "cognitive restructuring" OR "outcome evaluations" OR "stress management" OR "dietary change"

"social cognitive theory" OR motivation

Tips for Searching Databases

Most of the databases that you use to look for articles will use Boolean searching, so it's important for you to understand how it works and how the operators function. Interfaces differ between databases, but Boolean searching always works the same way. If you aren't familiar with Boolean searching and you only have 30 seconds, this is the video to watch.

Boolean Example

Boolean Operators

There are three Boolean operators that are used to connect terms and tell databases how and what to search for: AND, OR, NOT.

AND is to combine terms, usually unlike terms/concepts. AND narrows a search. Example: diet AND income

OR is typically used with synonyms and similar terms. OR broadens a search. Example: income OR low-income

NOT is used to exclude something. Example: low-income NOT covid

We use parentheses to help group parts of the search query, especially when we have several parts, and to tell the database the order of the query. Think about the search query as a mathematical equation.

All put together, they look like this:  diet AND (income OR low-income) NOT covid

Truncation allows you to find different endings to a word. The symbol in many databases is: *

Example: teenage* captures teenager, teenagers, teenaged.

Be careful not to truncate too far into the word. For example: car*  will capture car, cardiology, carbohydrate, caramel, carabidae, carassius, and thousands more words. carbohydrat* would be a better way to truncate.

In Pubmed

At least four characters must be provided in the truncated term.

The truncated term must be the last word in the phrase.

Truncation turns off automatic term mapping and the process that includes the MeSH term and any specific terms indented under that term in the MeSH hierarchy. For example, heart attack* will not map to the MeSH term Myocardial Infarction or include any of the more specific terms, e.g., Myocardial Stunning; Shock, Cardiogenic."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/help/

Wildcards are symbols used within a word to represent a letter for a variation on spelling. While not every database uses them anymore, for those that do, the symbol is often ? or $, though always best to check the database documentation.

Example: behavio$r captures both the American spelling, behavior, and the British spelling, behaviour
 

In PubMed

"To search for all terms that begin with a word, enter the word followed by an asterisk (*): the wildcard character. 

To search for a phrase including a truncated term, use the following formats:

  • Enclose the phrase in double quotes: "breast feed*"
  • Use a search tag: breast feed*[tiab]
  • Use a hyphen: breast-feed* "

Publication Characteristics (Publication Types) with Scope Notes (Peer-Review)

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/pubtypes.html

 

Adaptive Clinical Trial

A clinical study in which a prospectively planned opportunity is included to modify trial designs and hypotheses based on data analysis from subjects in the study.

Clinical Study

A work that reports on the results of a research study to evaluate interventions or exposures on biomedical or health-related outcomes.  The two main types of clinical studies are interventional studies (clinical trials) and observational studies. While most clinical studies concern humans, this publication type may be used for clinical veterinary articles meeting the requisites for humans.

Clinical Trial

A work that reports on the results of a clinical study in which participants are assigned to receive one or more interventions so that researchers can evaluate the interventions on biomedical or health-related outcomes. The assignments are determined by the study protocol. Participants may receive diagnostic, therapeutic, or other types of interventions. 

Clinical Trial Protocol

The written description of a clinical study. It contains the study's objectives, design, and methods, including subject target and/or enrollment criteria. It may also present relevant scientific background and statistical information.

Clinical Trial, Phase I

Work that is the report of a pre-planned, usually controlled, clinical study of the safety and efficacy of diagnostic, therapeutic, or prophylactic drugs, devices, or techniques based on a small number of healthy persons and conducted over about a year in either the United States or a foreign country.

Clinical Trial, Phase II

Work that is a report of a pre-planned, usually controlled, clinical study of the safety and efficacy of diagnostic, therapeutic, or prophylactic drugs, devices, or techniques based on several hundred volunteers, including a limited number of patients, and conducted over a period of about two years in either the United States or a foreign country.

Clinical Trial, Phase III

Work is a report of a pre-planned, usually controlled, clinical study of the safety and efficacy of diagnostic, therapeutic, or prophylactic drugs, devices, or techniques after phase II trials. A large enough group of patients is studied and closely monitored by physicians for adverse responses to long-term exposure over a period of about three years in either the United States or a foreign country.

Clinical Trial, Phase IV

Work is a report of a planned post-marketing study of diagnostic, therapeutic, or prophylactic drugs, devices, or techniques approved for general sale after clinical trials, phases I, II, and III. These studies, conducted in the United States or a foreign country, often garner additional data about the safety and efficacy of a product.

Controlled Clinical Trial    

A work that reports on a clinical trial involving one or more test treatments, at least one control treatment, specified outcome measures for evaluating the studied intervention, and a bias-free method for assigning patients to the test treatment. The treatment may be drugs, devices, or procedures studied for diagnostic, therapeutic, or prophylactic effectiveness. Control measures include placebos, active medicine, no-treatment, dosage forms and regimens, historical comparisons, etc. When randomization using mathematical techniques, such as a random numbers table, is employed to assign patients to test or control treatments, the trial is characterized as a RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL.

Multicenter Study

A work that reports on a study executed by several cooperating institutions.

Observational Study    

A work that reports on the results of a clinical study in which participants may receive diagnostic, therapeutic, or other types of interventions, but the investigator does not assign participants to specific interventions (as in an interventional study).

Randomized Controlled Trial    

A work that reports on a clinical trial that involves at least one test treatment and one control treatment, concurrent enrollment and follow-up of the test- and control-treated groups, and in which a random process, such as using a random-numbers table, selects the treatments to be administered.