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FNN 202 – Public Health Nutrition

Searching a Database

  • Login with your torontomu account

  • To identify databases relevant to Nutrition, look at the recommendations on the research guide for the program

  • Use the Advanced Search options to create more detailed searches and expand relevant results

  • Play with synonyms (like terms) to expand your results, using Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT) in databases

  • Use truncation, *, to search for root variant of words where applicable, e.g. child* will retrieve child, children, childhood

  • Separate your concepts into individual rows to include synonymous terms, e.g. stress OR anxiety 

  • Modify your search where necessary, making use of field-specific searching, e.g. searching for your terms more narrowly in specific parts of the article, e.g. abstract

  • Take advantage of additional features in databases, which can help identify highly-cited research, specific types of research design, and other subsets of the literature

  • If the full-text of the article is not in the database, use the Check TMU Library links to find full-text, where available

  • Example of an advanced search in Nutrition and Food Sciences - video embedded below: