Answered By: Dave
Last Updated: Sep 09, 2022     Views: 23

Hi *****, thanks for sending a note to the library. I happy to help!

I'd like to address each of your questions, good questions. 

I understand you need articles on "teaching nutrition in early childhood education programs" with a focus on dental, physical, and mental parts of nutrition effects.

Although the library has developed a list of great databases for education (click here if you'd like to use them) -- for this particular topic I would like to take us, instead, to another tool that connects back to APU library's full text databases. That tool is Google Scholar.

Begin by going to Google Scholar by clicking this link: https://scholar.google.com/

If you are asked to turn on your Gmail account, do so. I believe doing so provides results with more full text. 

To begin with, let's turn on the feature that connects Google Scholar (abbreviated as GS) back to APU library's full text databases.

In the upper left corner click the three bars, then click Settings, then click Library links.

In the box type azusa and click the search button. Click the box next to the three APU results, then click the Save button. Leave the box checked next to Open WorldCat because this accesses the largest database of book records in the world. This is what you'll see:

After clicking Save, you'll return to the GS search screen. Now your browser is set to connect you back to APU library's full text articles. The link will look like APU Library FT Finder

 

Here's the approach I'd like to take: first find articles on early childhood nutrition education AND dental, next find articles on early childhood nutrition education AND physical, and finally find articles on early childhood nutrition education AND mental. OK? 

For the first part of your topic, in the box type "early childhood" education nutrition oral

Include the quotation marks, doing so will give better results. I tried searching with "dental" -- but "oral" seemed to retrieve better results. Click the Search button. You'll retrieve something like 111,000 results - but don't worry read on.

 

Here's an example of the first record that came up:

A few helpful things to know about GS before moving on:

  • GS is the largest database in the world of free scholarly articles; most are likely also peer reviewed. If you're not sure if it's peer reviewed, simply copy the journal title, search Google for the journal's website -- which will tell you if it is peer reviewed.
  • GS's default search - searches ALL FULL TEXT and is why results are very large.
  • Clicking a link to the right of a GS record brings up full text (if there are 2 links, first try the top one).
  • You can narrow on the left by year - by clicking Since [year].
  • Under each record there is a "Cite feature, giving you the citation of the article in 5 styles including APA!
  • Under each record there is a Cited by [number] feature, giving a number of other resources in GS that has cited that article since it was first published. The thought is - the more "Cited bys" the more important and perhaps useful that article might be.
  • If you click Cited by [number] you get all those articles that cited the orignal article - and you can search those articles to find other more recent studies on your topic.

 

Continuing. . . for your topic, let's narrow on the left by clicking Since 2018

Now there are 21,800 results. Still a lot. But GS has a computer program (called an algorithm) that sorts all results so the "best" one are at the top. If the search is done right, you should not need to look at more than the first 10 or so to find useful articles.

Look at the first couple of results. Focus on the ones that have a full text link on the right. And use the "snippets" (relevant text from inside the article) to decide if it's is a good fit for your needs.

If you find something, click the full text link on the right and save the PDF to your computer's hard drive. I recommend you save ALL your full text PDFs in one folder (call it Articles) and label ALL your files in the same way: 1st author's last name, first 7-8 words of the title, the year published. That way you can more easily find articles in the future and create your own library of good articles for future assignments.  

 

Continuing. . . for the second part of your topic use this search:

"early childhood" education nutrition physical

For the third part of your topic use this search: 

"early childhood" education nutrition mental

 

Searching for and finding good articles is a process. If one group of search words don't retrieve useful results - than change the words and try again. 


I hope this is helpful

Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you

Dave Harmeyer

dharmeyer@apu.edu

Or we could do a Zoom meeting, just click on this appointment link: https://apu.libcal.com/appointments/dharmeyer