_KINS5508: Exercise Prescription for Individuals with Chronic Diseases and Health Conditions

On this page of the research guide, you will learn:

Once you've engaged with all the content on this page, you should:

PubMed is a free database provided by the US government. It primarily consists of MEDLINE, a dataset of over 36 million citations from the biomedical literature.

If you've searched MEDLINE on other platforms (like EBSCO or Ovid), the difference in content is that PubMed also includes PubMed Central, an archive of full text journal articles; and the Bookshelf, an archive of books, reports, and other materials. In terms of searching, the technical syntax in PubMed is very different from what you would use on those other platforms, even though the controlled vocabulary is the same.

PubMed's default search uses Automatic Term Mapping (ATM) to make an educated guess as to what you're looking for. The most important thing ATM checks for is whether there is a good match for the words or phrases in your search within PubMed's controlled vocabulary (MeSH, or Medical Subject Headings).

ATM is fine, but in a systematic search, you'll need to have full control of what PubMed is doing. That means:

• Using the Advanced Search page
• Identifying appropriate controlled vocabulary
• Constructing your own complex search strings and combining them thoughtfully
• Using search tags to tell PubMed where to search for terminology

Controlled vocabulary is the specialized language used by a database to describe the references within it. The controlled vocabulary used in PubMed is called MeSH, or Medical Subject Headings.

Watch the video below to learn about two ways to locate relevant MeSH terms and use them to further develop your concept table.

Now that you've watched the video, search the MeSH database to locate controlled vocabulary about your own research topic and add them to your concept table.

Have you:

Then it's time to take a quick detour from searching! Before you search, you'll need to consider how to manage the references you find. That's why you'll move on to the next page, Managing References As You Search!