Previous to this assignment, I had done some searches on ProQuest and had some difficulty finding what I was looking for. I experienced a similar difficulty as a completed this assignment. Here's what happened: I decided to look for information on Factor 5, a blood clotting disorder that I had never heard of until a friend of my was recently diagnosed with this condition. When I went to ProQuest and typed in "Factor 5," the articles that I was directed to were not relevant Here is an abstract of one of the articles I was directed to: "Mechanisms must be developed to identify patients who require assistance after discharge or transfer from an acute care facility. Recent changes in legislation have mandated discharge planning. Announced in 1986, the new Conditions of Participation for hospitals for the Medicare and Medicaid programs require that discharge planning be initiated in a timely manner and that patients, along with necessary medical information, be transferred or referred to appropriate facilities, agencies, or outpatient services for follow-up or ancillary care, if needed. The legislation points out the need for identification of high-risk discharge planning groups. While there is no single, universally applicable formula for determining which patients will benefit most from discharge planning, there are a number of high-risk indicators. Some of these include: 1. age, 2. residence, 3. behavioral factors, 4. social and familial factors, 5. medical condition, and 6. level of nursing care or social service needed. " I was able to figure out that because the word "factors" was followed by "5," the article came up as match to my search term "Factor 5," even though the article is not about the medical condition called Factor 5. When I went to Goole and typed in "Factor 5," I was directed to relevant articles. When I changed my search term to "blood clotting disorders," the articles I was directed to were relevant but not specific to Factor 5. I'm not sure why my ProQuest search for information on Factor 5 was not successful - if anyone knows what I need to do differently so that I am directed to relevant articles, please let me know what suggestions you have. When I went to Google and typed in "Factor 5, " the articles I was directed to were relevant.
My search for articles from professional journals was much more successful. When I used the search term "middle school grammar," I was directed to 40 different articles. Some of those 40 articles included games and activities. I noticed that when my search term was "middle school grammar games," I received a note stating that no articles matching my search term were found. When I used " middle school grammar activities" as my search term, I was directed to only two articles. Thus, I figured out to keep my search term quite broad.
I need to explore ProQuest further, trying other search terms to see what the results will be. The access to professional journals that ProQuest gives educators makes it a very valuable electronic resource.
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ProQuest can be tricky for certain topics, as you found out, Kay. A lot of is has to do with figuring out what terms they are indexing, and, as you learned, the computer cannot determine context. I searched "factor 5" in quotes and looked at one of the articles, which had the term and then IRF5 as another term. I redid my search with IRF5 as the term, and got 59 full-text documents that look as if they deal with the medical condition you are interested in. So sometimes one article can give you the right term to search. We think ProQuest is a good all-purpose research database, as it has both popular & scholarly periodicals covering a broad range of topics. I'm sorry your experience wasn't more positive, and I hope you will try it for more general topics. Thanks for your comments!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your helpful explanation, Jane!
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