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Library Resources: Occupational Therapy: CINAHL Search Tips

This Libguide contains information about resources available through the Xavier Library that will help you with your OT research.

CINAHL Search Help

CINAHL Plus® with Full Text is a robust collection of full text for nursing & allied health journals, providing full text for more than 770 journals indexed in CINAHL®. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo. CINAHL Plus with Full Text is the core research tool for all areas of nursing and allied health literature. Full text coverage dates back to 1937.

Evidence-Based Practice Tip: To limit search results to articles with some level of evidence: Type your search strategy in the textboxes provided. At your search results, click Search Options (in right menu). The Search Options window will open and in the Publication Type selectbox click Research. Then click the Search button.

Refining search results

There are many ways to refine your search results in CINAHL.  One of the easiest ways to do this iis to type in your terms to get a list of citations, and then use the limits that are listed under Refine Results on the left-hand side of the screen.

Limit by date:  Use the slider bar under the Limit To section to select a date range, or type in the beginning and ending years in the boxes above the bar.

Limit by country:  Select a country under the Geography section.  USA is listed first.

Limit by language Select a language under the Language section.

Limiting by type of publication

The Advanced Search screen is the default screen that appears when you select the database.  This screen includes Search Options that are listed below the search text boxes.

Evidence Based Practice:  Check the box for Evidence Based Practice in the right column,

Practice Guidelines:   Select Practice Guidelines from the Publication Type box in the right column,

Research articles:  Check the box for Research in the left column.

Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals:  Check the box for Scholarly Journals in the right column.