Nursing

General guide for library research in Nursing

Recommended Databases for Nursing

CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window
Current Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature Complete includes indexing back to 1937 of over 5,000 journals as well as full-text of over 1,300 journals, 27 books, 134 evidence-based care sheets, 360 research instruments records, 169 quick lessons and more.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
National Library of Medicine's comprehensive database of citations to medical journal articles, with links to UMass-subscribed full text, 1946-present. PubMed includes all MEDLINE content, plus content from additional journals and books in the life sciences.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
UpToDate This link opens in a new window
Current, evidence-based, physician-authored healthcare guidelines for point-of-care decisions.
Available only to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with a UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password. Walk-in access is not available for this resource.
How to Access UpToDate
Before you can use it, you must first Register on the UpToDate homepage. I made a video and created step-by-step written instructions on the whole process.
After you create an account with UpToDate, you can download the mobile app (available for iOS and Android).
Log in with the UpToDate username and password you created, and you are ready to go!
You will get an email every 90 days prompting you to verify your account to renew your mobile access. This means that you need to log back into the web version of UpToDate (linked above) to reset the timer.
How to get UpToDate Mobile Access (PDF)
Step by step instructions for members of the UMass Amherst community to register for an UpToDate Account that gives access to the mobile app. It also includes a few troubleshooting tips.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Published by the American Psychological Association (APA), PsycINFO is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed journal literature in psychology, behavioral science and mental health - 2,500 journal titles indexed - 2.8 million records - 1887 to present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Cochrane Library This link opens in a new window
Independent evidence-based information to inform healthcare decision making for medical caregivers and patients.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Index to articles from peer-reviewed journals in all disciplines.Search by cited reference, topic, author, and more. Arts and Humanities covers 1975-present; Social Sciences 1900-present; and Science 1900-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
PILOTS: Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress This link opens in a new window
NOTE: Now called PTSDpubs
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
PsycTESTS This link opens in a new window
This can be a helpful resource when looking for existing surveys and test instruments.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Finding Full Text & Interlibrary Loan

When you find an article you want, you can click on the UMass search button to get the full text.

The UMass search button connects to a tool that will find the full text online if it is available in any of the databases UMass has access to.

It will also search the library catalog to see if the library has it in print.

If an article or book is unavailable at UMass Amherst, you can get it using our Interlibrary Loan service. There will be a link to Request this resource through Interlibrary Loan on the window that opens after you click the UMass search button.

Here's a screenshot as an example of you might see after clicking the UMass search button.

More about Interlibrary Loan

To log into Interlibrary Loan use your UMass NetID and password (same as what you use for SPIRE and Moodle or Blackboard).

The first time you use Interlibrary Loan, you will be prompted to fill out a profile form, so we know who you are and how to contact you when your item arrives.

NOTE: In the Delivery Preferences section of the profile form, you must choose a Loan Delivery Method and a Pickup Location. All article requests are delivered electronically, so these options do not apply to articles.

After completing the profile, you should then see a pre-populated article request form. Make sure all the required fields are completed (sometimes they don't all transfer to the form), then submit it and usually in 1-2 business days you'll get an email that your article has arrived! The email will include a link into the Interlibrary Loan system, where your article PDF will be available to print or download.

Is the journal Peer Reviewed?

Many of your assignments will require you to locate articles from Peer Reviewed journals. Some databases include an option to limit your search results to only articles from peer reviewed journal.

Other databases, like PubMed, do not. There are several ways you can find out if a journal is peer reviewed.

One of the easiest ways is to look the journal title up using the eJournals link on the UMass Amherst Libraries home page. Above the journal title, it will say peer reviewed if it is.
Or, you can look it up in the Ulrich's database (linked below). Peer reviewed (also called refereed) journals will have this symbol next to the title:

How to find out if a Journal is Peer Reviewed
Handout with step-by-step instructions on how to find out if a journal is Peer-Reviewed

Ulrich's Web This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive index of periodicals types, published worldwide.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Other Databases To Try

National Library of Medicine Research Guides
NLM guides for health statistics, drug information, conference proceedings, genetics & genomics.

PILOTS: Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress This link opens in a new window
The PILOTS bibliographic database, covering the Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress, is produced by the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The PILOTS database is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Science.gov
A site that organizes access to health and medicine information from U.S. government agencies. Current.

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
Maps illustrating Census data from 1790 to 2010, with recent community, religion, and carbon emissions data.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
ERIC This link opens in a new window
Education journal articles (EJ references) and ERIC documents (ED references), 1967-present. EDs before 1997 are requestable using the Microforms Request page and usable in the Microforms Vewing Room in the LC.
A free version of ERIC is available for all to use at this link: https://eric.ed.gov/.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
CRS Reports This link opens in a new window
Congressional Research Service reports are compiled by the Library of Congress for members of the Senate and House of Representatives on various issues.

Uncheck all but CRS reports when doing your search.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Places to find Health Data

NOTE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders issued in early 2025, most of the U.S. government agency websites listed below have removed or will be removing data on a wide range of health issues, focusing on those that look at disparities based on race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. There are many initiatives to protect these data and continue to make them accessible. The first link below is to Data Lumos, one of the sources that has lots of health-related data.

If you need help finding data, please don't hesitate to contact me!

DataLumos
DataLumos is an ICPSR archive for valuable government data resources. ICPSR has a long commitment to safekeeping and disseminating US government and other social science data. DataLumos accepts deposits of public data resources from the community and recommendations of public data resources that ICPSR itself might add to DataLumos.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Data
CDC Data and Statistics
Data and statistics on a variety of topics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Child & Family Data Archive
"Launched in 2019, the Child and Family Data Archive (CFData) preserves and disseminates data on topics related to young children, their families and communities, and the programs that serve them. CFData holds hundreds of datasets and accompanying documentation for secondary data analysis on important issues of policy and practice relevance, including data previously housed with Child Care and Early Education Research Connections (CCEERC)."
Data.gov
"The home of the U.S. Government’s open data.
Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more."
Dataset Catalog at NLM
from the website: "The Dataset Catalog is a catalog of biomedical datasets from various repositories for users to search, discover, retrieve, and connect with datasets to accelerate scientific research. This beta version aims to collect user feedback to inform future product development."
Google Dataset Search
From their About page: "Dataset Search enables users to find datasets stored across the Web through a simple keyword search. The tool surfaces information about datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web, making these datasets universally accessible and useful."
HealthData.gov
ICPSR Data
"An international consortium of more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community.

ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields."
National Center for Health Statistics (CDC)
National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) Measures Registry
A collaboration among CDC, NIH, USDA, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The registry "is a searchable database of diet and physical activity measures relevant to childhood obesity research. Its purpose is to standardize use of common measures and research methods across childhood obesity research at the individual, community, and population levels."
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development DASH (Data and Specimen Hub)
"The NICHD Data and Specimen Hub (DASH) is a centralized resource that allows researchers to share and access de-identified data from studies funded by NICHD. DASH also serves as a portal for requesting biospecimens from selected DASH studies."
PMC Article Datasets
options for text-mining PubMedCentral articles
USDA FoodData Central
"FoodData Central is an integrated data system that provides expanded nutrient profile data and links to related agricultural and experimental research."
The World Bank Health Nutrition and Population Statistics
"Health Nutrition and Population Statistics database provides key health, nutrition and population statistics gathered from a variety of international and national sources. Themes include global surgery, health financing, HIV/AIDS, immunization, infectious diseases, medical resources and usage, noncommunicable diseases, nutrition, population dynamics, reproductive health, universal health coverage, and water and sanitation."

ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. This link opens in a new window
Statistics from U.S. agencies on population, society, trade, the government, and much more, 2013-present. This for-profit version continues Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1878-2012.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Proquest Statistical Insight This link opens in a new window
References to statistical reports from federal, state and local governments, private organizations, and intergovernmental agencies, 1973-present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
Maps illustrating Census data from 1790 to 2010, with recent community, religion, and carbon emissions data.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Tests and Measurements

Here are some places where you might find existing tests, surveys, instruments or other measurements to use or adapt for your research.

PsycTESTS This link opens in a new window
Produced by the American Psychological Association, it provides access to thousands of actual test instruments.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
Mental Measurements Yearbook with Tests in Print This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive guide to over 3,000 contemporary testing instruments. MMY contains information essential for a complete evaluation of test products within diverse areas - psychology, education, business, and leadership. Coverage: 1938 to present.
Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

NIH Toolbox
"Using advanced test development techniques, our goal is to promote measurement science and outcomes research as the building blocks to excellent healthcare."