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What causes disease?
For any "disease" or condition, you could start by considering interactions among environmental and social factors:
Poor diet, resulting from individual food choices, "causes" nutritional deficiency or obesity in a population
But consider:
Consider that how issues are framed is influenced by our assumptions and biases, and also, keep swimming upstream!
Is your topic researchable?
You may need to broaden or narrow the focus of your topic.
This may become more apparent as you search for and find information. It may prove difficult to find research on very narrow topics, or to cope with the vast literature on an un-focused, broad topic.
Below are some examples of questions or lines of inquiry.
Considering what question a research article addresses may help you determine if it's relevant to your needs:
What is a good Research Question? It is a question that:
This blog post has tips on how to write a good research question, including examples of bad, good, and great questions.
What is the question being addressed in the study you are reading? Compare:
Finding a systematic review that addresses the question you are interested in can be very helpful
It may be useful to have a structure to help guide you when searching.
When you formulate a research question, consider these elements:
Note: It is possible that not all of the above elements will be appropriate for your search topic.
Here is a handout (PDF) to help with this process.
This exercise (PDF) will take you through the process of formulating a search using this structure.
PICO is another popular way to structure a search.
PICO stands for Patient or Population; Intervention; Comparison or Control; Outcome.
Embase has a PICO Search option.
Words matter!
Indexing facilitates more precise search statements, especially for topics that are vague or ambiguous.