NURS 1059: Healthy Mothers and Babies – A1 - Midwifery - Guides at University of South Australia

Assignment 1 - Annotated Bibliography

This assignment has 2 separate components:

A Literature Search Short Report and
An Annotated Bibliography.

The topics for this assignment are provided by your lecturer in the course outline.

Please refer the learnonline course site for assessment instructions.

Plan your search

Start by identifying the concepts (main ideas) from your assignment topic prior to searching.

Then consider alternative words for these concepts which, together with the concept term, become your searchable keywords.

Break down the question

Example: What impact does gestational weight gain have on the future health of women?

Concepts: - gestational weight gain

health

Synonyms - gestational, weight gain

pregnancy
weight increase, BMI, Body mass index,

Now use AND and OR to combine your keywords

gestational OR pregnancy

AND

weight gain OR weight increase OR BMI OR Body mass index

AND

health

Plan your search (Midwifery)
Learn more about how to plan your search for your assignment in this Library guide.

Find journal articles

Journals are the primary medium for scholarly communication and account for a large percentage of university research output. Journals contain collections of articles and are generally published on a regular basis.

For further information about journal articles and a list of key databases to help with your research:

Find Journal articles for your Assignment

Search in databases

Journal articles are often found in databases.

Useful databases to search:

Emcare (via Ovid)
Key database for nursing and allied health, covering thousands of scholarly and peer reviewed journals from 1995 to present. Publications are primarily European and North American. Records are indexed with Emtree thesaurus terms (same as Embase). Example subject coverage: nursing, critical and intensive care, nutrition, physiotherapy, public and occupational health, geriatrics and palliative care.

Search Emcare Tutorial

MEDLINE (via Ovid)
The US National Library of Medicine database. Covers medicine, nursing, bio-medicine, pharmacy and allied health. Can filter by publication type.
Scopus
One of the largest bibliographic, multidisciplinary databases. Covers chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, life sciences, health sciences, social sciences, psychology and economics, as well as biological, agricultural, environmental and general sciences.
Health Collection
The Health Collection includes research articles, reports and case studies of practical support to anyone studying or working in therapeutic, diagnostic and preventative health roles
ScienceDirect
For peer reviewed articles on a large range of subjects including health

Database limits and filters

Database limits and filters may be applied to reduce your search results if you have too many. Some useful limits include 'English Language' or date. Note the following about using limits:

Using a limit only applies to the database you are currently searching. If you have selected more than one, only the results from the filtered database will display.
If the database is bibliographic (abstract) only – it won’t find any full-text. Using a full text limiter will therefore yield 0 results.

If you limit your results, there is always the potential that you could miss some important/useful research.

Select appropriate references

You should critically evaluate all resources found to determine their appropriateness for your assignment. The video below explains more.

Key points from the video

Having access to a lot of information can be overwhelming.
Evaluating information helps you decide what resources you should use.
One technique you can use is the CRAAP test.
Currency: How recent is the information? Does it suit your needs?
Relevance: Is the information relevant to your assignment?
Authority: Who wrote the information? Are they an expert?
Accuracy: Is the information accurate? Is it supported by evidence?
Purpose: Why was the resource created? Is there any bias?
You can use the CRAAP tool to think about these issues when evaluate your resources.

Write your Assignment

View the Student Engagement Unit's Academic Skills website for help writing your assignment, or to make an appointment with SEU staff.

This assignment should be written in 2 parts:

Part 1 is a Literature Search Short Report
This is a short report based on your literature search which should include the following sections:

keywords and search terms used
databases used
screening process
inclusion and exclusion criteria

Your report will need to contain a justification for the keywords/search terms and databases used and the articles chosen for Part 2.

Study help: Writing reports
An online hub packed with study resources.

Part 2 is an Annotated Bibliography

Summarise 5 of the articles from your literature search. Articles chosen should represent a selection of different forms of evidence and consider varying perspectives.

Study help: Writing annotated bibliographies
Learn about how to plan and write an annotated bibliography.

More help:

Study help: Writing and academic language
Printable resources and videos to help you structure, format and write your assignment using appropriate language.