Resources for Emory Healthcare Staff

Planning

Develop Research Question and Scope 

1. Describe the main topic as specifically as you can, then focus it by considering these factors: 

• What are the age groups, geographic locations, and/or socioeconomic considerations that you want to include?  
• Will comparisons be made with other diseases, conditions, methods? 
• What potential outcomes do you want to consider? (cost reduction, improved communication, etc.) 

2. Think about the scope of what you need--a few recent articles from major journals or a comprehensive search of publications? Do you need evidence-based information from clinical trials? 

Draft an outline of your paper 

1. Introduction: include the premise of your research. 

2. Body: include points you plan to address. 

3. Conclusion: recap your “findings.” 

4. Gather and collect references using a citation management program like EndNote.

5. Write your paper and cite your sources.  

Locate Literature 

• Use EHC Licensed Resources https://libraries.emory.edu/health/clinical-resources/resources-emory-healthcare-staff#230548828-1503259658 
• Grey Literature:  Grey literature is any documentation that might be relevant for your literature search that isn't produced by a commercial publisher; it often isn't found in a database. Government documents, reports, white papers, news articles, dissertations are all types of grey literature.

Searching

General Concepts: 

1. Decide on your topic and determine its scope. What factors do you plan to address in your research? 

2. Seek databases and resources which are appropriate for your research. 

3. Reach out to a Clinical Informationist or Ask Us if you need more assistance. 

Clinical Question: 

1. Use the PICO/PICOT method to generate your search concepts, keywords, or terms. The PICO method is a framework to help generate search terms. Not all questions will fit into the PICO/PICOT template, but it is still a good starting point. So what is PICO or PICOT? It is an acronynm to represent the following: 

• P: Patient/Population/Problem 
• I: Interaction/Indicator/Exposure 
• C: Comparison (sometimes there isn't one) 
• O: Outcome 
• T: Timeframe/Type of publication 

2. An example clinical question may be, "Does a mother's nutritional intake during pregnancy affect the birthweight of the baby?" 

• P: Patient/Population/Problem - pregnancy 
• I: Interaction/Indicator/Exposure - nutritional intake/food/diet 
• C: Comparison (sometimes there isn't one) - n/a 
• O: Outcome - baby birthweight 

3. Use 3 or more concepts to yield better search results. 

4. Do not use natural language i.e. sentences in the search boxes of databases, just concepts or terms. Most biomedical databases do not recognize natural language. 

Non-clinical Question: 

1. Select a topic of interest and start broadly. 

2. Do some background reading on your topic of interest if you are not very familiar with it. 

3. Determine what aspect of the topic you want to research. Is your question something that is answerable? Is it quantitative or qualititative? 

4. An example research question may be, "Does social media influence the use of tobacco by adolescents?" Even though this question is not a clinical question, the PICO framework can still be used. 

• P: Patient/Population/Problem - adolescents 
• I: Interaction/Indicator/Exposure - social media 
• C: Comparison (sometimes there isn't one) - n/a 
• O: Outcome - tobacco use 

5. Take the concepts generated with PICO and search the concepts in the appropriate databases. 

Free Citation Management Tools and style

• Zotero https://www.zotero.org/ 
• Mendeley https://www.mendeley.com/ 
• Online Style Manuals https://libraries.emory.edu/health/writing-and-publishing/organize-references/online-style-manuals