Formulating a Research Question and Academic Search Complete

Part One:

My Research question (thus far) is: 

How do traditional medical systems, outside of Western biomedicine, approach the treatment of mood disorders?

Part Two: 

a. The main concepts in my research question are: traditional medicine and mood disorders.

b. Search Statement: (Ethnomedicine OR Traditional Medicine) AND mood disorder*

c. Used in ASC:
 ethnomedicine OR "traditional medicine" AND "mood disorder*"
"Ayurved*" AND "mood disorder*"
"Chinese medicine" AND "mood disorder*"
 acupuncture AND "mood disorder*"
"native American* AND "traditional medicine" AND "mental health"
"indigenous people*" AND "traditional medicine" AND "mood disorder*"
"indigenous people*" AND "traditional medicine" AND "mental health"

d. Database Limiters used: peer reviewed, publication date

Part Three:

This week actually frustrated me quite a bit. I was getting hung up on my search using the term ethnomedicine. I also kept feeling like using this term in my research question was making it sound awkward so I ended up using a common synonym, “traditional medicine”. I was also trying to make sure it was clear in my research question that I was excluding biomedicine which is a type of ethnomedicine/traditional medicine. However, when it comes to which term is more appropriate for a scholarly anthropology essay, I feel like ethnomedicine is the more specific and correct term.

I also considered narrowing my subject further to one type of mood disorder. I really wanted to focus on bipolar disorder but was not really having much luck in Academic Search Complete finding articles on that particularly. Actually, I found that ASC in general was bringing up too much or not getting really to the information that I was hoping for. I have typically used anthropology and psychology specific databases to find ethnographic information in the past with MUCH better luck. I really tried to utilize the Boolean operators and things we learned from the past lessons to help in ASC but I was still very frustrated. I ended up having to search much more specifically using the different types of ethnomedicine I had found in my exploratory research as my search terms alongside mood disorders. For example, I searched “ayurvedic medicine” AND “mood disorders”; “Chinese Medicine” AND “mood disorders” etc. Using these terms, I was able to find some articles that I think will be useful.

I think I was almost to the zone of intervention this week! I really had to put some effort into finding the exact right topic; I think it was called the “Goldilock’s area” in the lesson. And ultimately, I may still narrow it down more and focus further on one specific type of mood disorder depending on what sources I can find from the anthropology and psychology databases. I learned the lesson a long time ago that some topics are more obscure and difficult to research than others. Ethnographic information, including topics in medical anthropology such as the one I have chosen, from my experience, is more easily found in books or from more tailored databases. Every time I got to the point in my level of frustration that I felt like I was hitting a brick wall, I walked away for a while giving my self-time to come up with other ideas and solutions to my search issues. In the end I was successful at obtaining some good information from Academic Search Complete, but if ASC was not required for the assignment this week, I would have kicked it to the curb within the first hour of frustration and used another database!

Comments

  1. SamFebruary 20, 2018 at 1:49 PM

    Hi Brandi, thank you for persisting with this frustrating search experience, and for documenting your searches! The use of Boolean terms is good, except that you would want to put parentheses around (ethnomedicine OR "traditional medicine") to so the database will retrieve items that have one or both of those terms *and* your third term, "mood disorder." Your research question is a very good one, although it may be a struggle to identify the best terms to describe "mood disorders" since this is a concept specific to recent western psychology. I'm glad to hear that you found at least a few worthwhile things. Did it help when you shifted from "mood disorders" to "mental health"? You'll be glad to hear that we're moving on to subject-specific databases this week. I'll be curious to see which ones are most helpful for you.--Sam

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