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Occupational Health & Safety: Get started

5 KEY STEPS to get the most out of your search:

Adapted from https://guides.library.unisa.edu.au/

The advice and interventions of OH&S professionals must be based "on evidence from science, in balance with their expertise, and with workers’ and other stakeholders’ values and preferences. Evidence-based professional practice is one of the remedies against misinformation creating confusion and distrust in the society." van Dijk, F., & Caraballo-Arias, Y. (2021). Where to Find Evidence-Based Information on Occupational Safety and Health?. Annals of Global Health, 87(1), 6

Through the library, you'll find professional and scholarly resources. The types of resources that you can find via the library include:

When doing any kind of research, you'll want to find a mix of these resources to have a well-rounded and thorough view of your topic.

1.    Open Web: 
(online encyclopedias and dictionaries, professional organizations’ sites, universities’ and colleges’ sites, and government sites)

2.    Article Databases: 

Reference books include encyclopaedias, handbooks, dictionaries, bibliographies and directories. Use them to define terms, or find topic overviews. These books will help you get familiarized with your topic. Find more by searching the library catalogue.

 Encyclopedias:

 To save time, use encyclopedias in the early stages of the research process!

The condensed articles give good topic overview and context for your later research. Perusing an encyclopedia will offer keywords 

that will focus on your topic and that you can use in database searches.

 Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia

 The Gale Encyclopedia of Nursing & Allied Health

 MedlinePlus includes an Encyclopedia. 

 Mosby's dictionary of medicine, nursing & health professions.   R 121 M89 2022

 Wikipedia (use with caution). Use it for a very general overview of your topic and for its list of References or Further Readings at the end of the essay.

 Dictionaries:

 Visual Thesaurus -- allows you to try 3 "visual searches" for free; it is subscription based. It creates word maps.

 Wordnik -- online dictionary that integrates visualization tools, social media, etc. 

 Handbook at the BCIT Library: 

 Current medical diagnosis & treatment     RC 71 A14 2021

 

Use truncation * , if relevant only -- example: nurs* (it will include results that refer to nursing, nurses, nursemaid, nursery, etc) 

Snowballing

  1. Start with a relevant article or a "seed article" - an article that strongly supports your research topic.
  2. What papers cite them? (Looking forwards)
  3. What papers do they cite? (Looking backwards)
  4. Keep iterating between steps 2 and 3

A: "Looking forwards" in your research 

  • You can find additional, related articles via a database. Look for "Cited by" links (PubMed, Google Scholar) and "Times cited" (EBSCOhost databases) in your search results.
  • Citing publications are published more recently than your relevant article. 
  • Note: The citing author may be supporting or disagreeing with arguments in the original research article.

Cited by shows a list of works that cited this article. The higher the number, the more important the article is in its discipline.

Related articles redirects to similar articles on the subject sharing some of the same keywords and/or references

B: "Looking backwards"

  • you will begin with a select number of articles you have identified as relevant/strongly supports your topic
  • search each articles' references reviewing the studies cited to determine if they are relevant to your research.

BONUS POINTS: This process also helps identify key highly cited authors within a topic to help establish the "experts" in the field.

 Watch the video on Forward & Backward Searching: Using Citation Searches for Literature Reviews, from the University of Wisconsin Whitewater

FUN FACT: Click here to find out more about Boolean Logic.

What does "Boolean" mean?

George Boole, an English mathematician in the 19th century, developed "Boolean Logic" in order to combine certain concepts and exclude certain concepts when searching databases.

Pronunciation: BOO-le-un

Identify key concepts and alternative terms in your topic

  • State what you need in a sentence.
  • Select keywords from your statement.
  • Use these keywords as search terms.

preventing sleep exhaustion among truck drivers

Brainstorming Keywords The words you type into the search box affect your search results. Not all authors use the same language to describe similar topics, so you will need to try a variety of searches.

  • Create a list of possible words (synonyms or alternative terms) that might be used to describe the key concepts in your statement
  • Connect your concepts using AND and OR
  • Change your search as you find more information
  • Stick to using 2-4 nouns when searching

Keywords:

sleep, health behavior, decision-making, safety, driving

Drowsy  driving; Driver  lifestyle; Driver behavior; Safety;  Truck drivers;  Driving motivations

“truck driver” AND “fatigue”.

Note: Because the dimension of emotional fatigue may not be adequately addressed in the long-haul trucking literature, the key terms “emotional fatigue” AND “occupational” AND “safety” could also be included.

Concepts

  

Synonyms

sleep exhaustion

OR

 Fatigue OR “sleep deprivation” OR “sleep loss” OR “sleep disorder” narcolepsy or insomnia OR drowsy

“truck drivers”

OR

prevention

OR

Manag*

 Canada

 OR 

 Canad*

1. Search on FIRST SEARCH to see what is available on the topic and to identify other terms: Sleep and "truck drivers" 

2. Search on a Database: Academic Search Complete 

(sleep or “sleep loss” OR narcolepsy or insomnia OR drowsy or "sleep deprivation" or "sleep quality") AND "truck driver*" 

Limiters – date (e.g., published within the last 10 years), language.