Guides: Master of Public Health: Find Sources

Forming your Search String

The more complicated your question, the less likely a search engine can understand it. To get the best result, identify keywords and like terms to create a search string.

Example research question: How did housing insecurity impact the spread of COVID-19?

Keywords: housing insecurity, spread, COVID-19

Like terms can include synonyms and also examples of your keywords. If you don't get results from searching your keywords, it doesn't mean that the research doesn't exist. It could mean that the researcher used different language to describe the same topic

Housing insecurity- homelessness
Spread- infection rate
COVID-19- coronavirus, pandemic

Search strings connect your keywords and like terms together for the best results.

Too many results? Use AND to narrow results

housing insecurity AND spread AND COVID-19

Too few results? Use OR to broaden results

housing insecurity OR homelessness AND spread OR infection rate AND COVID-19 OR coronavirus

students reading in front of periodical display

Also known as peer-reviewed articles, scholarly articles are sources that are:

written by experts in the field
reviewed by other experts in the field (hence the peer-reviewed)
intended for an academic audience

While you can find scholarly articles through general search engines, databases contain a feature where you can narrow your results to only scholarly articles.

Find Articles in Medicine & Epidemiology Databases:

PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
For search by Publication Type, see PubMed's subject term guide: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/pubtypes.html
Medline This link opens in a new window
Created by the United States National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE is an authoritative bibliographic database containing citations and abstracts for biomedical and health journals used by health care professionals, nurses, clinicians and researchers.
Health Source - Nursing/Academic This link opens in a new window
Scholarly journals covering nursing and allied health topics including pediatric nursing, critical care, mental health, nursing management, medical law and more. Includes more than 320 full-text journals and a comprehensive medical dictionary.
COVID-19: Pandemics Past and Present This link opens in a new window
Dedicated to exploring how medical disasters of the past inform the present response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this database brings together federal government reports, hearings, and more. Content that is COVID-19 specific is organized into the following areas of focus: Economic Impact, Global Impact, Health Care Impact, and Societal Impact, with a separate subcollection exclusive to Past Pandemics.

Find Articles in Public Policy Databases:

HeinOnline Academic This link opens in a new window
HeinOnline Academic includes more than 100 million pages of multidisciplinary content in more than 100 subject areas, including history, political science, criminal justice, religious studies, international relations, women’s studies, pre-law, and many more.
OxResearch This link opens in a new window
Short analytical articles covering both world and regional economic and political developments of major significance.
Congress.gov This link opens in a new window
Find federal legislative information such as bills and resolutions, activity in Congress, committee information, and more.
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Scholarly business journals and publications covering marketing, management, accounting, finance and economics. Business Source Premier also includes market research reports, industry reports, country reports, company profiles and SWOT analyses.

Find Articles in Social Sciences Databases:

APA PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
World's largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. Produced by the American Psychological Association, it includes more than 4 million bibliographic records and indexing of more than 2,500 journals.
OneFile: Diversity Studies This link opens in a new window
Search a subset of Gale Academic OneFile journals covering cultural differences, contributions and influences in the global community. Includes over 2.7 million articles from 150 journals.
Formerly called Diversity Studies Collection
Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Ultimate offers access to resources cited in key subject indexes. The combination of academic journals, magazines, periodicals, reports, books and videos meets the needs of scholars in virtually every discipline ranging from astronomy, anthropology, biomedicine, engineering, health, law and literacy to mathematics, pharmacology, women’s studies, zoology and more.

Student thumbing through a book in front of library stacks

Books and eBooks often provide a broader overview and cover more information than a scholarly journal article.

You don't need to read an entire book to use it in your research. Use the index at the back of a book to find the information you need.

To find books and eBooks, you can either:

Search the NOBLE catalog

NOBLE Catalog Search
Search the Jenks Library catalog for books, eBooks, audiobooks, scores, etc.

Stack locations for books on topics in the field of Public Health are located across the stacks due to the interdisciplinary nature of public health. Below are common call numbers and stack locations for a variety of subject areas in the fields of public health.

RA- Public Aspects of Medicine
Stack Level 5

Subclass

RA 1-418.5 - Medicine and the state
RA 421-790.95 - Public health. Hygiene, Preventive medicine.
RA 791-954 - Medical geography. Climatology. Meteorology.
RA 960-1000.5 - Medical centers. Hospitals. Dispensaries. Clinics.
RA 1001-1171 - Forensic medicine. Medical jurisprudence. Legal medicine.
RA 1190-1270 - Toxicology. Poisons.

For more subclasses in the Recreation, Leisure classification, see the LOC Classification outline.

H - Social Sciences

HG 9371-9399 - Health Insurance
HV - Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology.

K - Law

K 3566-3578 - Public health in law
KB 3075-3096.5 - Public health in religious law
KBM 3075-3097 - Public health in Jewish law
KBP 3075-3096.5 - Public health in Islamic law

L - Education

LB 3401-3495 - School hygiene. School health services.

For more subclasses in the Medicine classification, see the LOC Classification outline.

Statistics Databases

Statista This link opens in a new window
Statistics portal integrating statistics and other quantitative data on over 80,000 topics including media, business, finance, politics, and more.
Census Bureau Data This link opens in a new window
Search for population, housing, economic, and geographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau. New streamlined platform offers direct access to information all in one place.
Formerly called American Factfinder
World Bank Open Data This link opens in a new window
Find data about development in countries around the globe, including World Development Indicators, Global Development Finance, African Development Indicators, and Global Economic Monitor.

Publicly Accessible Statistic Resources

Office of Minority Health Population Profiles
CDC WONDER
WONDER online databases utilize a rich ad-hoc query system for the analysis of public health data. Reports and other query systems are also available.
Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker
The Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF are partnering to monitor how well the U.S. healthcare system is performing in terms of quality and cost.
Injuries, Illnesses, & Fatalities
The Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities (IIF) program produces a wide range of information about workplace injuries and illnesses. These data are collected and reported annually through the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) and the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI).

If you find an article or book that you can't access, don't pay for it! Instead, submit an Interlibrary Loan request, and you'll receive articles within a few days!

Interlibrary Loan: Article & Book Request
Can't find the article or book you're looking for at Gordon? Fill out the Interlibrary Loan request form and we'll track the article or book down for you!

Are you looking for a specific article, like an article that you found referenced in a bibliography? Search for the journal in Journal Finder, linked below:

Browse Journal Finder
Find individual journals and search within specific publications.