Factors Affecting Students' Use of MEDLINE

Abstract

MEDLINE search transcripts by a class of third-year medical students were analyzed. The 184 students were divided into three groups according to their search experience in terms of the number of sessions logged at the time of a search assignment. A strong relation was found between the level of search experience and the frequency of use in the subsequent 5 months. Over 80% of the students were able to retrieve a few useful items for an emergency clinical situation. More experienced searchers were able to retrieve more relevant items than less experienced searchers. However, no relation was found between search effectiveness and clinical knowledge as indicated by two scores derived from the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Clinical Assessment examination and Part II of NBME. Similarly, clinical knowledge also did not appear to relate to MEDLINE search experience. More exposure to MEDLINE during medical school could play an important role in developing effective literature searching skills for lifelong learning, which is essential for today's health professionals.

The impact of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) terms on information seeking effectiveness

“…One possible solution is to identify the user characteristics and their relationship with system features that may contribute to better search performance. However, previous research on the impact of user characteristics in the use of information retrieval systems has suggested that (a) domain knowledge or specific topic knowledge is not correlated with search outcome (Allen, 1991;Pao, Grefsheim, Barclay, Woolliscroft, McQuillan, & Shipman, 1993) and (b) search experience with databases cannot predict search outcome (Fenichel, 1981;Howard, 1982;Sutcliffe, Ennis, & Watkinson, 2000). That raises the question in what specific conditions these system features like human-developed index terms and automatic indexing techniques will be useful for different kinds of users.…”

“…Domain knowledge or specific topic knowledge is not correlated to search outcome (Allen, 1991;Pao et al, 1993);…”

“…Previous research on impact of searcher characteristics, particularly domain knowledge and search experience, on search effectiveness has been inconclusive (Fenichel, 1981;Howard, 1982;Hsieh-Yee, 1993;McKibbon, Haynes, Walker Dilks, Ramsden, Ryan, Baker, L., et al, 1990;Pao et al, 1993). It is still unclear for which kinds of searchers the MeSH terms will be most useful in the context of searching complex biomedical topics.…”

“…Comprehensive Clinical Assessment examination and Part II of NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners), since the study population was medical students (Pao et al, 1993). Hembrooke and her colleagues' (2005) study used the subject's self-report of search topic familiarity as a measure of the domain expertise since the study was designed to investigate undergraduate students' Web searching behavior.…”

O usuário final da busca informatizada: avaliação da capacitação no acesso a bases de dados em biblioteca acadêmica

“…Analisaram, também, a performance dos alunos por meio de questionários. Já Pao e col. 10 (1993), em avaliação do desempenho de alunos no acesso a bases de dados, colocam que a maioria das bibliotecas acadêmicas, principalmente da área da saúde, promovem de alguma forma o acesso a bases de dados e que o treinamento de usuários para esse fim tem sido prática comum desde a década de 80. …”