IHW 305: Approaches to Care: Systems of Medicine: Identifying Types of Research

When you are looking at a citation for an article in a database, look at the following fields for clues to help you to determine which type of nursing research best describes your article:

Publication Type:  The Publication Type might indicate if your article is a research article, a review article, or it might specify certain types of research (such as meta-analysis).

Major Subjects / Minor Subjects / MeSH Terms:  Subject terms often provide insight into the research methods utilized in the article, and may identify specific types of nursing research (such as quality improvement or meta-analysis).

Abstract:  Words and phrases in the abstract will often reveal if the article is a research or review article, or indicate the research methods used by the authors.

This image shows an example MEDLINE record for an article reporting a study on curcumin (turmeric) supplementation in patients with liver cirrhosis.Within this record, information about the type of research is found in these fields:

Title: the words "randomized controlled trial" appear. The full title is Effect of curcumin supplementation on disease severity in patients with liver cirrhosis: A randomized controlled trial.

Publication Type: The article is described as "Clinical Trial, Phase III; Journal Article; Randomized Controlled Trial."

MeSH Terms (Medical Subject Headings): The headings Double-Blind Method, Pilot Projects, and Retrospective Studies indicate the type of research.

Abstract: The researchers describe their study as a "randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial." Elsewhere in the abstract, not shown here, they say it is a "pilot study."