Text Box: CINAHL Help Sheet
An Introduction to Using CINAHL 
Text Box: Creating a Basic or Advanced Search 
1. On the Basic Search Screen, enter search terms in the Find field to conduct a text word search. 
On the Advanced Search Screen, enter search terms in the Find field to conduct a subject search.
2. Use Limiters to narrow your search, for example: 
• Publication – Limit search results to records from a specific title.
• Journal Subset – Choose from blind peer reviewed, behavioral sciences, nursing, etc.
• Special Interest – Limit to advanced nursing practice, case management, critical care, etc.
• Publication Type – Limit results to source types such as care plans or systematic review.
• Age Groups (Advanced) – Limit to Child, 6-12 years; Middle Age, 45-64 years, etc.
3. Click the Search button. 
Searching Techniques 
The CINAHL Subject Heading List (controlled vocabulary or thesaurus) provides a more effective 
searching capability in the CINAHL database. On the Advanced Search Screen, enter a 
research topic (e.g., arthritis). To retrieve a relevancy ranked list of related subject headings, 
first click the Suggest subject terms box above the Find field, then click Search. Click on 
a resulting hyperlinked term for details. 
Tree views of the subject heading are shown on the left side of the screen; subheadings 
are on the right. To retrieve results with arthritis as a subject headings click the box to the left of the term arthritis.To retrieve results in which arthritis is the major point of the article, click 
Major Concept. To expand on a subject heading, click the box to the left of Explode. Specific 
sub-headings can be selected by checking the box to the left of each. Click Search Database 
to view results. To narrow the focus of your search, click the Refine Search tab. Select the 
limiters you want to apply to your search, then click Search for a more focused Result List.
Field Searching allows you to designate one specific field in the CINAHL record within which 
your term will be searched. These fields include (but are not limited to): 
Article Title (TI), Author (AU), Author Affiliation (AF), Abstract (AB), Pagination (PG), 
Source (SO). 
• To search within a field, enter the two-letter field code, followed by your search term. 
For example, type au Smith to search for Smith in the Author field of the record. 
Note: Field codes are not case sensitive. For a complete list of field codes, click the 
Field Codes link that appears directly above the Find field on your search screen. . 
• Depending upon the format of your Advanced Search Screen, you may be allowed to 
select the most commonly searched field codes from a drop-down list.
Managing Your Search Results
To manage (print/e-mail/save) results for the current session only, click on the folder icon next to a desired item in the Result List. Items placed in the session folder will be removed if you log out of EBSCOhost, or if your session times out. Sign in to My EBSCOhost to create a personalized folder for saving results, searches, persistent links to searches, search or journal alerts and web pages created using Page Composer, which will remain in your folder after you log out of EBSCOhost. 
Text Box: