For this week's theme, I chose to focus on finding information about how people with disabilities access online health information and barriers they might face in the process. I used the following search strategy:
As you can see from the above screenshot, I was using the "Expert Search" feature. I found that "Advanced Search" was actually fairly limiting, containing only two search boxes where I wanted to add multiple search facets. To ensure currency, I only searched for articles published within the last four years. I modified the search to look within the subject field of "Medicine and Dentistry." Lastly, I decided that I only wanted articles from journals rather than book chapters, so I selected that option as well.
Even with all of the refining I did, my search still yielded an impressive 795 results! I examined the first few pages and found them filled with relevant results, so I elected not to limit my search further and concluded that this was likely a common topic in medical journals.
Here are some examples of the types of articles I received from my first page of results:
All of the results above appeared to be related in some way to the topic I was searching about, but the first result seemed especially relevant:
What did I learn this week?
Content:
As far as article content is concerned, I learned that despite legal obligations otherwise, many health information websites still possess a low level of accessibility. A study by Liang, et al. (2011), found that individuals who are newly diagnosed with a disabling illness are more likely to seek any information about their condition that they can find, where chronic individuals tend to seek more specific information. The authors also found that as an illness progresses and becomes more debilitating, individuals are more anxious about the information seeking process. Naturally, as mobility or function decreases, patrons prefer websites that are more accommodating or easier to use; however, when obtaining health information is viewed as paramount, patrons will often strive to get the information at any cost despite the difficulty level of doing so. Their findings suggest that usability should be re-evaluated for health information websites and should be modified to meet the needs of individuals with mobility issues and progressive, disabling illnesses.
Searching:
As far as the use of ScienceDirect is concerned, this week I learned about browsing and limiting via a subject area. I wish more databases would allow a user to browse by subjects like this one does. There are so many areas under the umbrella of science! I can easily see potential overlapping of search terms in multiple subject areas. By limiting a search to a specific sub-genre (such as dentistry, medicine, or psychology,) you can ensure that the terms you are using are relative to the field you would like to search in, rather than another branch of science. For example, searching for information about telomeres in medicine may bring up different types of articles than searching for information about telomeres in Biology.
Reflections:
Would I use ScienceDirect again?
All-in-all ScienceDirect seems like a fairly standard database. It functions similarly to many of the other databases I have already covered in this blog. Honestly, though, the advertising was very irritating and distracting. Take a look at my first screenshot. Can you see ads at the top and in the right-hand side bar? These advertisements follow you on every page you visit. It seems that the ads are devoted to educational products, but it still makes the database appear unprofessional and amateur. When I look back on all of the other professional databases I have used in my educational career, I cannot recall another one that has used advertisements. It is not as if Elsevier is a small organization, either. They are a vendor for quite a few different databases and I can recall using their other products without the presence of annoying advertising (Scopus is one example). If these distractions were removed, I could see myself using this database on a regular basis.
Ideas for future searches
Look at all of those results... 795 of them! Yes, many of them were relevant. However, it still makes me wonder whether I am thinking too broadly about my topic. Perhaps I should focus on a particular type of disability for future searches to obtain more focused results. Someone with a neurological condition may have different needs or barriers to information than someone with low vision. Would narrowing my search mean finding more targeted information or would it mean coming up empty? Would this strategy only work in a database that deals with medicine? I know one of the reasons I had so many results with ScienceDirect is that quite a few of the articles addressed very specific types of disabilities rather than lumping them all together in one study group. Perhaps this is something to consider for my next search?
What do you think? What considerations should a Librarian make when narrowing their topic? How much limiting is too much? Maybe next time I will try a pearl growing approach instead!
As always, I would love to hear your feedback. Feel free to drop me a line!
- Crystal
Reference:
Liang, Huigang, Yajiong Xue, and Susan K. Chase. "Online Health Information Seeking by People with Physical Disabilities Due to Neurological Conditions." International Journal of Medical Informatics, 80 no. 11: 745-753.
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