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Health Care Administration Research Guide

Introduction to Health Care Administration Research

Finding quality sources to inform your research 

The library's website and associated resources are a good place to start your research into various health education and intervention programs and health data. There's also a great deal of information on the open web. Here are some broad categories to help you get started in terms of places to look:

  • Library Quick Search - searches through all the library's resources, print, online, and media, and includes content that's normally inaccessible behind paywalls for the general public.
     
  • Library Databases - subscription services for specialized information, including content that is inaccessible to the general public, and only available through libraries. Go to the library's website to access these resources, and log in with your IslandID to use remotely.
     
  • Government & Health Agency Sites - There is a wealth of information on US federal government (and other NGO and government sites) freely accessible on the web.
     
  • Google Scholar - This version of Google features academic resources and many scholarly, peer-reviewed articles. Customize your Google Scholar settings to connect to the library's resources.
     
  • Google - Can find great resources, but be sure to use your lateral reading skills to fact-check information!

What's a keyword?

It's really important to distill your topic down into searchable keywords. You might need to change your keyword language or spelling, or use specific symbols or connecting words to combine keywords to get the best results.

BOOLEAN OPERATORS 

The three words that you can use to combine your search keywords most efficiently are: and, or, and not. 

  • AND can be symbolized by the plus sign (+). It will find results that contain two or more specified keywords. AND tends to narrow searches and show less results.
    • Example: coffee AND beans
  • OR will find results that contain either keyword. OR tends to broaden searches and show more search results.
    • Example: party OR celebration
  • NOT selectively eliminates any results containing the second keyword.
    • Example: royal NOT Caribbean

This image contains a graphic depicting boolean search operators and modifiers with examples summarized in the text above and below.

BOOLEAN MODIFIERS

Three symbols you can also use to further refine your search keywords are "quotation marks," (parentheses), and the asterisk *.

"Quotation marks" searches for groups of words together. This works best if you are looking for a title or phrase.

Example: "remote work"

(Parentheses) can be used in some databases or library resources to group words instead, or in cases of complex searches, to tell the search engine which elements to process first.

Example: roses AND (red OR white)

The asterisk * is usually found above the number eight on most keyboards. Use the asterisk * to abbreviate words so you can find all possible spelling variations in your search results. It will also make your search results increase, typically.

Example: educ*

Results - education, educational, etc.

 

The NURS 4660 Course guide has many useful links for finding health data. Here are several suggested places to find health data:

Quick Search - Search ALL the Library Collections

View of Quick Search on the library's home page displaying additional search filters under the search box.

You can try out Quick Search using the box below. You might be prompted to log in with your IslandID.

Quick Search is your best bet to find a book, ebook, journal article, streaming content, and more! First click on the search box to display the additional filters below. Then click on the filter you want to narrow down your results to just a single format. Commonly used filters are: 

  • Books/ebooks
  • Articles
  • Films/Video
  • Music/Audio Recordings
  • Full-text online (OPTIONAL: use this filter only if you want just online to display in your result list)
  • Peer Reviewed (OPTIONAL: use this filter only if you want just scholarly peer reviewed journal articles to display in your result list)

Then type in your specific title, surrounded by quotation marks. An example might be: "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."