Home - Our
programs - Health
Promotion Hub
What are Internet search skills for health promotion?
What is it?
Sites and search engines on the Internet categorize and find information in many different ways. Search skills help us use these resources effectively and find answers to questions more quickly.
How is it connected to health promotion?
Health promotion topics can be difficult to research. Terms are often vague or unspecific: "prevention" or "empowerment" for example. Knowing a few search tricks can help decrease frustration and increase search accuracy and effectiveness.
Tips for Internet searching
A good search begins with a vision of what the best results might look like. Searching is a process of refining your terms: if the results you see do not yet match your vision of the best possible results, consider what changes might bring that vision closer.
 Use quote marks or parentheses to enclose phrases. The search engine will look for the entire exact phrase rather than looking for each word individually. For example, search "health promotion" instead of health promotion.
The minus sign can be used to eliminate words from search results. Usually the need for this becomes clear after you've looked at a set of search results and found them overrun with something irrelevant to your topic. For example, if you are researching blue jays, you will need to remove baseball references from your results: "blue jay" bird -baseball
Use Advanced search wherever it exists. Often it will offer many options not available from the usual search box. The minutes it takes to explore the available options will likely lead to helpful search results sooner than an ordinary search. A link to an advanced search is often found to the right of the search box, often in very small text.
Use Google to search within a site using site: in your search. For example, to search for the phrase "health promotion" within Health Nexus' website, go to Google and enter "health promotion" site:healthnexus.ca in the search box. Note that there is no space between site: and the address of the site you're searching.
Eliminate a site from search results using -site: in your search. Sometimes search results can be overrun with unwanted content, for example from shopping sites such as Amazon. To remove these you would add -site:amazon.ca to your search. Again, note that there is no space between –site: and the address of the site you wish to eliminate.
Remember search engines can’t access content that’s within databases. Consider whether separate searches of sites like MedlinePlus or the Cochrane Library might be worthwhile.
Check bookmark sharing sites such as delicious.com and diigo.com. These sites arepublicly-curated link collections and are open to searches. It can be useful to see what others have found on your topic by searching this type of site.
Use Google's Advanced Image Search or Flickr'sAdvanced Search if you are searching for images you plan to re-use. These sites find images whose creators have specifically licensed them for public usage. Google's search terms this "Usage Rights" while Flickr uses Creative Commons license types. See Creative Commons for more information. Remember that unless online content is specifically licensed for re-use, it is protected by copyright law and it is illegal to use it without its owner's permission.
Search Twitter if you require broad information about something that is happening right now. Twitter provides real-time results from thousands of users and can be much faster at reflecting current events than formal news media. Keep in mind, however, that by its very nature information on Twitter is highly subjective.
Use the Wayback Machine if you are looking for something that was once online but has been changed or taken down. It searchs for old versions of the website on which the information you want was located.
There is rarely a straight path from search topic to good search results. Each step, even the ones that lead you on seemingly unprofitable tangents,can help to refine your search and bring your goal closer. Don't give up!
Where can you go for more information?
Health Nexus offers a workshop on this topic. The outline as well as extensive supporting materials are online.
CommonCraft has an excellent short video, Web Search Strategies in Plain English,
Gwen Harris, a professor at the University of Toronto, has an extensive collection of Web Search Tools.
|
