We recommend these databases as places to search for information in Occupational & Physical Therapy. The best database depends on your specific research topic and you may want to search multiple databases.
Many Occupational Therapy & Physical Therapy topics may also be included in multidisciplinary databases. Or, your research may fall focus on a more specific area of study. These resources may point you in the direction of additional articles or other information sources.
AND / OR / NOT
Boolean operators help you explain to a database how you'd like the words in your topic or research question to be related in the results that you find. Identify the main concepts or variables in your research topic (usually 2-3 is a good starting place) and any related terms or synonyms for each concept. Then, use the following operators to build your search.
AND - Searches for articles containing both terms. Use AND to combine main concepts or variables in your search.
Example: "low back pain" AND "core stability" = results contain BOTH terms
OR - Searches for articles that contain EITHER or BOTH terms. Use for synonyms or related terms.
Example: "low back pain" OR LBP OR "lumbar pain" = all results that mention either of these terms
NOT - Excludes articles that contain a term. Use sparingly.
Example: "low back pain" NOT athletes = results that mention "low back pain" but not the term "athletes"
" " = Search for an exact phrase of two or more words
Tip: In most advanced search screens there are multiple search boxes where you can use each box to represent a "main concept" in your search. Here's an example search for research on low back pain and core stability in women.
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