Browsing the Headings
To find headings, navigate to the CINAHL Headings tab on the Advanced Search page.
You should now see a search box labelled "Search for terms in CINAHL Headings". Enter the keyword you would like to search for.
The results will be a list of potentially appropriate headings. Sometimes there might be a direct suggestion for your keyword. To view the scope and related terms, click on the linked subject name. If nothing looks good, try searching for one of the other keywords you brainstormed instead!
Explode and Major Concept
If a term has the Explode box available, that means there are other terms nested under it. Click on the linked term for a tree view of the heading, or use the drop down arrow on the right of the term. Selecting Explode will look for the subject term you chose, plus any narrower terms underneath it.
Checking the Major Concept box will require the subject term is part of the main point of any articles returned. This is very helpful if you are getting a lot of results that are not relevant.
Subheadings
When you select a term using the checkbox on the left side of the results, a list of applicable subheadings will open. Subheadings are an excellent way to really refine your search results. Once you check a term it is added to the box on the right and will update as you make adjustments.
Using More Than One Heading
There are a couple reasons you may want to add additional terms to the same search.
If there are two or more different terms that would work for your topic, check both. Make sure the Join terms using: drop down is set to OR. This will look for either one, the other or both.
If you need articles that combine different topics or narrow your broader topic, use the "Add to search" button to add your selected terms to an empty field in your search.
Then, search for the second term you would like to add, select the term and use the "Add to search" button to add it to an empty field in your search.
Once both terms are added, you can use the Boolean Operator dropdown to edit how the different terms are combined. AND will search for both terms and only find results that have both terms selected.
To combine heading searches with both OR and AND, add the terms to your search and use the Boolean Operator drop down in the advanced search fields area to specify how you would like to combine your search.
Search Database
When you are done exploring the headings and ready to try the search, hit the big green Search Database button.