support.ebsco.com CINAHL with Full Text Advanced Searching Tutorial

Welcome to EBSCO’s Advanced Searching tutorial, featuring CINAHL with Full Text, the world’s most comprehensive source of full text for nursing and allied health journals. In this tutorial, you will learn how to perform an Advanced search using CINAHL Headings, as well as how to make the most of the Search History functions.

We’ll begin by searching for Subject Headings. The CINAHL Editorial staff has assigned subject terms based on article content, resulting in more relevant results when you utilize Subject Headings. Check the Suggest Subject terms box, then enter your term, such as catheter infections, in the Find field, and click Search. You can also click on the CINAHL Headings link along the top toolbar to browse for appropriate subject terms.

A list of appropriate CINAHL headings, or subject terms, appears, defaulted to Relevancy Ranked. Note that your search term appears at the bottom of the list with the option to search it as a keyword if an appropriate subject heading is not available.

To the right of the subject terms list is a Major Concept option which, when selected, will restrict results to those articles in which your chosen subject is a major focus. For details about this option, click on the Help icon beside it. Next, we’ll click on the subject heading to see the hierarchical tree view, subheadings, and additional information.

The Tree Views, or hierarchical arrangement of subject headings, are displayed on the left, and on the right are the Subheadings which may be selected to further refine the subject. If a subheading is not selected, all of the subheadings are searched. (Additional information about a subheading appears in a new window, when you click on the Scope link beside it.)

In this example, we have selected the subject headings of Catheter-Related Infections with the subheadings of Complications or Drug Therapy or Nursing or Prevention and Control or Risk Factors. After making our selections, we’ll click on the Search Database button.

A result list is displayed. The search is displayed in the Find field, and can also be seen in the Search History by clicking the Search History/Alerts link. This search could be further modified by using the Limiters and/or Search Options available in the right column under Limit your results. In this search, we want to restrict our results to catheter infections in the urinary tract.

We click on New Search to clear our Search screen and any limiters we may have selected, so we can create a new search on urinary infections. After completing the search on urinary infections, we will combine it (using our Search History) with our subject search of Catheter-Related Infections. Enter urinary infections in the Find field, select Suggest Subject Terms and click Search.

The list of subject headings relevant to urinary infections is displayed. Click on the term to view the Tree Views and Subheadings.

The option to Explode is present for this term, as there is a narrower term ‘under’ Urinary Tract Infections – Bacteriuria. The Explode option, when selected, will search not only Urinary Tract Infections but also the more specific term of Bacteriuria. If a comprehensive subject search of all types of Urinary Tract Infections is wanted, we select the Explode option. If desired, Major Concept and specific subheadings could be selected. In this example, we will select Explode and click Search Database at the top of the screen.

The search is displayed in the Find field (the + indicates the term is exploded). The next step is to combine this search statement with the search statement S1, which is the subject search on Catheter-Related Infections. To add S1 to our existing search, check the box to the left of the search and select a button to combine the searches. We’ll click Search with AND as results which can contain both subject headings are required.

S1 has been added to the Find field. Click Search to generate an updated Results list.

The Search History is displayed with the results below. This search can be further refined by selecting options from the Limit Your Results column on the right. The Search Options link provides additional limiters which are available to further refine your search.

Frequently used limiters include Research Article, Evidence-Based Practice, and Age Groups. After selecting any desired limiters, click Search.

The result list is displayed. Note the red Options set indicator, which reflects that limiter(s) have been selected.

The Search History reflects all of our search statements and each search statement provides the term(s) and limiter(s) searched, as well as the number of results retrieved. Past results can be retrieved by clicking on the View Results link in the Actions column. Click the Revise Search link for S1, to place the entire search statement into the Find field. This is useful when further modification of the search statement is needed.

S1 has been added to the Find field. This search can now be edited and limiters applied. After making your selections, click Search and a new result list reflecting the changes will be created. A new search statement in the search history will be displayed.

Click on the Help link to view the complete online help manual, and visit the EBSCO Support Site at to browse our Knowledge Base of FAQs, download Help Sheets, User Guides and tutorials, or see what’s new in our Top Stories. This concludes the CINAHL with Full Text Advanced Searching tutorial.