Mental Health Nursing

Literature reviews have multiple purposes and can take many forms.  General guidance is below.

Often in healthcare and other fields, a systematic literature is expected. If so, see our specific guide:

There are several tools available to help researchers formulate a robust research question or hypothesis.  These may be helpful in refining your topic and developing a search strategy for your assignments.

Tools for:

• Quantitative studies:
  • PICO
  • PIO
  • PICOT
  • PICOS
  • FINER
• Qualitative studies:
  • PEO
  • SPIDER
  • SPICE
  • ECLIPSE
• Mixed methods studies:
  • SPIDER
  • FINER

Your search strategy incorporates all the decisions made while selecting items for your literature review.

Themes and keywords

• What are the separate elements of your topic/search? 
• Which are the principal key words or search terms for each element? 
• Are there obvious alternative search terms that should be included?  For example, 'international' could also be described as 'global' or 'worldwide'.

Your initial searches on the topic will help you ascertain relevant search terms.

Item types

• Which types of material are you including in your review?  This can be restricted to research articles or encompass policy papers, textbooks, reports, conference presentations, blogs and more.

Resources

• Which bibliographic resources are most relevant to your topic, and the types of material identified above?  Options include bibliographic databases and Google Scholar (journal and research papers); the library's OneSearch (books, exemplars and more), Google or other general search engines (policy papers, blogs ...).See Specialist Resources for links to CINAHL and other bibliographic services. 

Additional selection criteria

• Which other factors will determine your selection of individual items?  For example:
  • Does a specific date range for publication apply? 
  • Are you only interested in a specific scenario or environment?
  • Are you focusing on a specific population?

Please remember:

• Your decision making will be influenced, in part, by the restricted nature of your assignment and related timescale.
• You will be accessing and reading multiple items for each assignment.  Some of these will be relevant throughout our programme, or in other contexts. See the Keeping Track of your Sources page on this guide for advice on noting details methodically.

Research methods

Open access resources

Systematic reviews

If the article, or book, is not available, see possible External and Open Access options. 

Still no success?

Library staff may be able to obtain a copy for you - see our Inter Library Loan guide for details.