Lecture 7 - Finding Information, an Introduction

online medical information

any health-related data available on the internet, encompassing a wide range of topics from specific medical conditions to general health advice; not always accurate and often biased

most reliable consumer information source for medical info

medline plus; appears the least in searches

tools that evaluate online content assess…

Accuracy, completeness, authority, timeliness, usability, readability, accessibility

low stakes information

information like top movies or whether a store is open, less important to overall well-being

high-stakes information

information concerning health or home that’s important to overall well-being

authority - constructed

people and communities decide who has authority in a given area; we grant authority based on trust

authority - contextual

depends on the purpose, audience, and situation; expert in one area might not be in another

vertical reading

reading method where you evaluate a source's credibility based on its own internal characteristics, like the author's credentials, purpose, publication date, and the publication's goals

lateral reading

technique used to verify information online by investigating the source's credibility in relation to other sources

library databases vs google scholar

library databases have more control over search and are free but are less intuitive, google scholar thinks for you but not everything scholarly or free

how to search in databases

no full sentences/questions, ve very literal, generic drugs > brand

“and” vs “or” in search

"AND" narrows the search by requiring all specified terms to be present in the results, while "OR" broadens it by including results containing any of the specified terms

when do we use parentheses in search results

group related terms and control the order in which the search engine processes the query

cohort study type

observational study in type limiter

any primary study type

case reports, clinical study, comparative study, observational study in article type limiter

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

controlled vocabulary developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to standardize indexing and searching for biomedical and health-related information