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College of Health Professions Evidence Based Practice Portal

An interprofessional research portal for students in the Wichita State University College of Health Professions.

ACQUIRE

This module covers searching for articles and other evidence-based information to answer your clinical question. The resources on this page will assist you in developing a successful search strategy that can be applied to any number of information sources.

Formulating a Search Strategy

This tutorial is designed to assist you in formulating a search strategy for acquiring evidence. The strategies discussed in this tutorial can be applied to any database. You will learn how to compile a list of keywords for your topic and determine how to organize those keywords in order to retrieve relevant articles.

View the tutorial by clicking on the link below.

If you would like to view the tutorial on a mobile device (including iPads), please click here.

Study Design

Different types of clinical questions are best answered by different types of research studies.

This table suggests study designs best suited to answer each type of clinical question.

Clinical Question

Suggested Research Design(s)

All Clinical Questions

Systematic review, meta-analysis

Therapy

Randomized controlled trial (RCT), meta-analysis
Also: cohort study, case-control study, case series

Etiology

Randomized controlled trial (RCT), meta-analysis, cohort study
Also: case-control study, case series

Diagnosis

Randomized controlled trial (RCT)
Also: cohort study

Prevention

Randomized controlled trial (RCT), meta-analysis
Also: prospective study, cohort study, case-control study, case series

Prognosis

Cohort study

Also: case-control study, case series

Meaning

Qualitative study

Quality Improvement

Randomized controlled trial (RCT)
Also: qualitative study

Cost

Economic evaluation

Source

Finding the Full Text of Articles

When Full Text is Available

Ideally, when searching for articles, you'll see one of these icons that indcate the full-text of an article is available electronically:

  

If you see one of those icons, just click the link to view, save, or print the article.

Your Next Step . . .

If you don't see the above full text links, you might see the 360Link icon:

This will let you know if the article is available in another database or if it's not available electronically. Click here for a detailed guide on 360 Link.

InterLibrary Loan (ILL)

If we don't have an article either electronically or in print, you can request that article through ILL. Click here and log in with your myWSU ID and password. Click on Article under the New Request menu and fill out the information in the form. Due to the RapidILL consortial agreement, articles are often delievered to your email as a PDF file in as little as an hour!

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