Clinical trials are a form of grey literature and can inform current research conducted by organizations, Federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health, academic institutions, and individual health care providers. These studies investigate the effectiveness of new treatments, interventions, drugs, procedures, and devices in order to improve health outcomes for a specific population.
For more information about what is a clinical trial, please refer to the following book entries located in the SAGE Research Methods database:
For more information about clinical trials and regulation of studies, please refer to the following resources:
Content: APA database that offers full-text for journals published by APA, the Canadian Psychological Association, Hogrefe Publishing Group and APA's Educational Publishing Foundation. View the APA PsycArticles Journal History for a complete coverage list.
Purpose: Important database for psychology, counseling, and education students.
Special Features: The database is updated bi-weekly all content is available in PDF and HTML formats.
To search for clinical trials in APA PsycArticles, click on the Advanced Search link and select Clinical Trial under Methodology in the Search Options. Enter your keywords into the search box and click Search.
Content: Journal article database from the American Psychological Association that indexes over 2,500 journals along with book chapters and dissertations.
Purpose: Provides a single source of vetted, authoritative research for users across the behavioral and social sciences.
Special Features: citations in APA Style®, updated bi-weekly, spans 600 years of content
To search for clinical trials in APA PsycInfo, click on the Advanced Search link and select Clinical Trial under Methodology in the Search Options. Enter your keywords into the search box and click Search.
Content: EBSCO’s nursing database covering biomedicine, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health, and allied health disciplines.
Purpose: Database for research in nursing, medicine, and consumer health.
Special Features: Strong qualitative studies. Filter studies by nurse as author, evidence-based practice, and type of study. Includes MESH indexing, PICO search functionality, text-to-speech feature for some articles, and a tool for discovering citing articles.
To search for clinical trials in CINAHL, select Clinical Trial under Publication Type in the Search Options. Enter your keywords into the search box and click Search.
Content: Database of intervention focused systematic reviews.
Purpose: Learn the effectiveness of interventions proven through evidence-based research.
Special Features: Includes MESH and PICO search functionality.
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- Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR)
- Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)
- Cochrane Methodology Register (CMR)
- Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE)
- Health Technology Assessment Database (HTA)
- NHS Economic Evaluation Database (EED)
To search for clinical trials in Cochrane Library, select the Trials tab on the navigation menu and click Search Trials (CENTRAL).
You can also conduct a search using your keywords and select the Trials tab from the results list.
Content: Biomedical and health journals. Provides MESH subject headings and offers the full text of many popular MEDLINE-indexed journals that are not available in other databases.
Purpose: Informs users about health and medicine topics
Special Features: Includes text-to-speech function for some articles
To search for clinical trials in MEDLINE, select Clinical Trial under Publication Type in the Search Options. Enter your keywords into the search box and click Search.
Content: Medical database covering nursing, allied health, education and training, development and management, midwifery, health and healthcare economics, clinical medical and healthcare social work, psychiatry and mental health, and traumatology, emergency and critical-care medicine.
Purpose: Provides information about all topics relevant to nursing and nursing education
Special Features: Advanced search functions including MESH capability.
To search for clinical trials in the OVID database, follow these steps.
1. Click on Edit Limits on the basic search page.
2. On the Limits page, check Clinical Trials and save by clicking the Customize Limits button.
3. Enter your keywords in the search box, select Clinical Trial under the Clinical Trials limiter, and click Search.
Content: Includes citations to millions of biomedical journal articles, as well as some books, book chapters, and reports.
Purpose: An essential database for biomedical and health topics
Special Features: Includes MeSH search functionality
To search for clinical trials in PubMed, conduct a search on your topic. On the results page, use the Article types filter on the left to limit your search results to Clinical Trial.
To search for clinical trials in TRIP, select the Controlled Trials filter on the right after running a search with your keyword(s). NOTE: The Ongoing Clinical Trials filter is only available to PRO subscribers.
Locate clinical trial information by searching clinical trials registries:
Conduct a keyword search on your topic using NavigatorSearch, the central search box found on the Library's homepage. Your search should include specific keywords relevant to the medical condition or treatment combined with the phrase "clinical trial," as pictured below.
A general internet search may yield information about specific conditions or treatments and associated clinical trials. To find information about relevant clinical trials on Google, type the name of the medical condition or treatment combined with the phrase "clinical trial," as pictured below.
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