PHE 520 Qualitative Research Design: Background Research
Selecting Resources to Search
When doing background research on your topic, it is important to first sit down and plan how you will approach finding information. The most useful question you can ask yourself about searching is:
- Who cares?
In other words, which academic disciplines will have studied the subject? Your will lead you to discipline-related subject guides on the library website that contain disciplinary databases and other research resources.
Finding statistics will also support you to form qualitative research questions.
You may want to view search strategy resources on the Search Strategies & Tutorials tab, as well as the PubMed Help page on the Community Health guide.
On this page:
- Core Health Databases
- Qualitative Health Research Journals
- More Health Databases
- Multidisciplinary Databases
- Statistical Sources
- Related Guides
Image courtesy of David F. Flanders on Flickr
Core Health Databases
- Health Source: Nursing/Academic editionPresents article citations and full text articles from health and medicine journals.
- PubMed (Interface for MEDLINE)
This link opens in a new window
Provides citations and abstracts for journal articles in all areas of medical practice and research from 1953 to the present.
More Health Databases
- NCBI Bookshelf
- This link opens in a new window
Provides free access to texts in life science and healthcare from the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Covers the health sciences, biology, cell sciences, molecular biology as well as public health, health policy, and health education. - Annual Reviews OnlineComposed of full text, research reviews of current and emerging topics in a variety of disciplines including the biomedical, physical and social sciences.
Multidisciplinary Databases
- Academic Search PremierProvides selected full text, scholarly, and peer reviewed articles in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
- Google Scholar
- This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar searches the academic, scholarly Web for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles. Searching Google Scholar from the Portland State University Library will identify full text articles available from PSU Library resources as well as open access articles from other universities and colleges. - Web of ScienceMaintains citation searching for high impact research journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and sciences and includes emerging sources citation indexing from 2005.
Qualitative Health Research Journals
Statistical Sources
- PH Partners Health Data ToolsProvides a list of data and statistical resources for public health practitioners from government agencies, public health organizations, and health sciences libraries.
- Kaiser Family Foundation's State Health Facts OnlineThis resource contains the latest state-level data on demographics, health, and health policy, including health coverage, access, financing, and state legislation.
- National Center for Health StatisticsCompiles statistical information to guide actions and policies to improve the health of U.S. citizens.
- Sage DataContains national, state-level, and local level historical data for the areas of agriculture, crime and law enforcement, defense, economy, education, employment and labor, energy and environment, geography, government finances, health, households and housing, political science, population, social welfare as well as transportation. Replaces Sage Stats.