Search and Ye Shall Find: Practical Literature Review Techniques for Health Educators

Through a perusal of current published literature, health educators can locate resources for theses, dissertations, or manuscripts for scholarly publication or plan/develop health promotion programs or disease prevention interventions. Reviewing the literature, however, may be viewed as a nebulous or intimidating process. This article presents six steps intended to assist health educators to efficiently search the literature. The processes of assessing information needs, planning the search, choosing where to search, getting full-text articles, assessing the articles, and applying the evidence are outlined.