Free Comparison Of Two Database Directories With Google Scholar: Essay Sample

Comparison of CINAHL and Google Scholar and PubMed and Google Scholar

[Student’s Complete Name]

Health-related topic: Asthma among teens

Although my topic relates to asthma in general, I am more interested in asthma that crops up among teenagers who are exposed to furry pets like dogs and cats. In searching for my topic, I initially searched for asthma. PubMed and CINAHL both gave me relatively similar results; although, PubMed released for citations than CINAHL. But both results were dwarfed by Google’s almost 1.5 million results. I decided to narrow down my search by typing “asthma among teens 2014 study”, which narrowed down Google Scholar results to 19,800. Also, it reduced the number of results with CINAHL and PubMed. The articles that that I chose was the one from Lange et al. (2013), which is entitled: “Effect of cat and dog ownership on sensitization and development of asthma among pre-teenage children.” I believe that article is credible because it is published by the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and has been cited by 248 related articles. And upon generating and evaluating my search results for all three databases, I infer that PubMed is more reliable among the three. PubMed has well-indexed vocabulary and allows searchers to explore terminologies (Mckibbon & Marks, 1998). Also, it only includes peer-reviewed journals, which is contrary to Google School that search an entire article that contains the keyword, generating obscure results. Google Scholar is also known for generating grey literature (Shultz, 2007). CINAHL has limited resource so I do not mind to use anymore.
Using database allows me to acquire the most accruable, reliable, and credible resources to back up my research. It also offers convenience as you do not need to go through a series of laborious online searches using search engines or card catalogues in library. It is also particularly important for nursing work that stresses on evidence-based practice because it justifies every nursing intervention that is being applied and carried out to patients. As such, every health care consumer is assured that they are getting the appropriate nursing care that they need. Lastly, using database search facilitate my personal self-development by equipping me with new knowledge and techniques on how to generate, locate, or acquire expert materials on anything related to nursing or health care.

References

Mckibbon, K.A. & Marks, S. (1998). Searching for the best evidence Part 2: Searching
CINAHL and Medline. Evidence Based Nursing, 1(4). Retrieved from: http://ebn.bmj.com/content/1/4/105.full
Shultz, M. (2007). Comparing test searches in PubMed and Google Scholar. Journal of the
Medical Library Association, 95(4). Retrieved from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2000776/