How do I search with subject headings?
Answer
"What are subject headings?
To find articles, books, videos, or data that will support whatever you are writing or presenting, you need to search library databases and search engines with words used in or used to describe resources about your topic or related topics. You can read more about generating terms to search in our FAQ on keywords.
What do you do when searching with keywords find you too many or too few resources? What if you want to search for an extremely specific topic covered in a narrow health sciences specialty or set of journals?
Library databases, such as CINAHL, and the important database PubMed, assign subject headings to each article in the database. CINAHL uses its own standardized list of subjects, and PubMed staff assign MESH headings to each article. (https://youtu.be/uyF8uQY9wys You can learn more about MESH headings and how to search for them in this video from the NLM linked here). How do you find subject terms to search with?
Use the thesaurus or subject list inside the database
Some brainstorming is necessary in the beginning because you still need to search MESH or any subject headings, with some word or phrase! You could brainstorm terms, as discussed in the keyword FAQ, then search the subject heading thesaurus or list for that term (The fancy term for that is that you're searching with an entry term). If that term is not the subject heading used, you will often be directed to the term that is used. https://connect.ebsco.com/s/article/Using-CINAHL-MeSH-Headings?language=en_US >Click here to see a guide to searching the CINAHL subject thesaurus.
Make a list of subject term included in the records of articles you have already found. Use those to search.
https://libapps.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/173001/images/subjectheadingsarrow.PNG
Note!
**PubMed adds new articles to its database before it assigns them MESH headings. Very new articles in PubMed may not have any MESH headings assigned, as well as articles considered out of scope. Luckily, searching PubMed with keywords can still result in your finding articles with MESH terms and useful keywords in their records you can use for your own further searches.