By mastering the following module, students will be able to use the Internet for expanded health-related research. We will learn how to apply many of the Internet skills learned in the first two modules to the field of health and medical research.

Performance Objectives

1. Students should be able to access at least two of the following health-related sites from the Course Materials section: Medscape, National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Prostate Cancer InfoLink, and/or a MEDLINE site.

2. Use several of the site's features such as subject trees, journal article archives, etc. (See the terms section in the Materials section of this course if necessary).

3. Try a Boolean Search by going to the Materials section and reading about Boolean logic. Click on the Search button on your browser and type in a combination of health-related subject words, such as juvenile AND diabetes (feel free to use terms that you are personally interested in), compare several of the search engine's results using Boolean logic. As part of your essay, describe how many "hits" you got from each search engine along with describing how accurate and focused the first ten "hits" were.

4. Try one of the case studies to practice the skills learned so far. Go to the Materials section and read the case studies that I have compiled. Choose one that you are interested in and try to think of all of the search techniques that would be effective for this type of research.

5. Continue to develop and improve your Internet research skills by trying several of the Recommended Research Methods below.

Activities

We will learn how to apply many of the Internet skills learned in the first two modules to the field of health and medical research.

1. Search the NIH. In this activity we will explore the National Institute of Health Web site and some of it's features. Go to the Materials section of this course and lookup the NIH site. Try any features that are available such as a built-in search engine, links, subject trees, journal article archives etc.

2. Report your findings. As part of your essay, you should report on what you found at the NIH site. Describe what features and services you found at the NIH site. Describe any difficulty you had in navigating around the NIH site. What was useful and not so useful to you? Any tips or recommendations for your classmates?

3. Be able to perform a general Internet search using Boolean logic. After reading the section Boolean searching in the Materials section, try several Boolean searches.

4. Copy and paste text from the Internet to a word processor. Learn how Internet research materials can easily be transferred to a word processing program. After you perform an Internet search described above, try to hold down the mouse and drag through a paragraph of text. Go to Edit/Copy, and open a word processing program and do a Edit/Paste. This is a great way to keep track of research information without always re-typing it.

5. Try one of the case studies listed in the Materials section.

6. (Optional) Continue to try the various site features. Choose at least one site in the "General Sites" and "Specific Medical Sites" sections of the Materials. Once again, use several of that site's features to pursue a topic of interest to you (e.g. subject tree, journal archives, patient information, etc.). As part of the essay, describe what you found at these sites. What features were useful? Did you discover anything new?

7. Recommended Research Methods:

Here is a method for effectively performing online research:

1. Develop a list of all of the possible terms and phrases related to your topic.
2. Be sure to combine the terms in a variety of ways:
“medical jobs” AND California
“health jobs” AND California
"help wanted" AND medicine
careers AND healthcare
3. Try these terms and phrases with at least two of the single search engines- Google, Yahoo, Excite, etc. Quickly visit and record the five best sites.
4. Try these terms with at least two of the multiple search engines- Profusion, Dogpile, etc. Quickly visit and record the five best sites.
5. Try the specialized resources- Web rings, natural language (AskJeeves), invisible Web (databases), newsgroups, mailing lists, Web robots (bots), ask-an-expert sites, shareware sites, etc. Make a note to your client about which of these look the most effective, any shortcuts you recommend, etc.
6. Budget your research time so that you 'sweep' through the methods listed above during the first half, and go back and examine the most promising results during the second half. For example, if you had an hour for research, during the first half-hour you would try the methods above, and then focus the other half of your research time on the most productive options. You are 'blazing a trail' for yourself or for a client who will follow-up on your recommendations later.
7. Also, be aware of how credible the site looks, along with how you are going to document your findings so that you or your client can quickly locate your sources later.