SPAA 653: Balance Function and Assessment

You have a course project you will be working on requiring you to research a specific vestibular disorder.  This guide provides suggestions of library resources and search techniques that will help you to find the scholarly references you'll need to inform your presentation and your handout.

Requirements for your sources:

• At least 8 scholarly references. 
• At least 5 of the references should be current, with a date of publication of 2015 or later
• At least one must be a case study

You need to find scholarly resources.  The easiest way to do that is to use scholarly library databases.  Then all of your search results will be academic and scholarly in nature.  The three databases listed here are the top-hitters in the field of audiology.

Once you've chosen a database to search, just typing your disorder into a search box is the way to start off.  Putting quotations marks around disorders of more than one word is a good idea; it keeps the words together during the search.

If there are other ways to describe your disorder that you already know, you may include those with OR in between, as shown above.

To narrow your results, think about the heading suggestions for your handout, and try entering one of those terms in another search box.  If there are synonyms or related terms, it's good to include those.

You may be able to improve your results by using terms you see used in the subject field of the records you bring up.  For example, the database may prefer "semicircular" over "semi-circular."  Those little things can be important!

You may still end up with quite a few results.  Read on for other ways you can narrow your hits.

Another way to explore research about your vestibular disorder is by searching through the database thesaurus for the subject headings related to your disorder.  Specialized headings are used in health databases, making it easy to narrow down to subcategories related to a disease or disorder.

This example shows what this looks like in CINAHL, but Medline is very similar.

Start by clicking on "CINAHL Subject Headings" in the blue bar at the top of the screen.

Then type your disorder into the search box and click "Browse," as shown here:

There are several ways your can explore from here.  One way that's quite useful (shown below) is to (1) click in the box to the left of a subject heading you want to explore.  Then (2) choose subheadings you'd like to focus on related to your topic.  And then (3) click the "Search Database" button.  All of the records which are retrieved will be focusing on the aspects of your disorder which you checked off.

Sometimes the Thesaurus will guide you from one term to another they prefer you to use.

NOTE: For many of you, doing the search described in the "Search strategy" box above will work best with your topic. i.e. Not all of the vestibular disorders you are studying have a direct subject heading you can search on.

Most databases favor currency when sorting results, so recently published works will tend to be at the top of your list.  If, however, you want to look only at articles published in a certain time frame, look for ways to refine or limit your results with options on the left-hand side.  Some examples from different databases of what the limiters look like:

One of the references you use needs to be a case study. 

In order to limit your search to just pull up case studies, you'll look for a limiter box that says either "Publication Type" or "Document Type" depending on the database you're in.

In CINAHL and Medline...

...click on the "Show More" link under "Limit your results..."

...and then choose "Case Study" in the "Publication Type" menu.

In Nursing and Allied Health Premium...

... choose "Case Study" in the "Document Type" drop-down menu on the left.  You may need to click "More>" to see "Case Study" as an option.

When you're ready to read the full article, look for the HTML or PDF full-text icons.

If the article you want doesn't have a full-text icon, it should have a red Find It @ BALL STATE button.  Click there to determine if we have full-text access.

Read on for more information about Find It @ BALL STATE and how it can help you get your full article, even if you have to request a copy from another library through InterLibrary Loan .