Introduction to Health Services Research : A Self-Study Course
Module 4: Search the Literature of HSR: Databases (Page 22 of 29)
Section 1: Health Services Research Databases and Information Resources
NTIS - National Technical Information Service
Established in 1950, the National Technical Information Service is "the largest central resource for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information available today."
Health services researchers are often interested in the full text of documents that appear in this large database. Content covers numerous topics of interest to researchers.
Librarians like it for the access it provides to the unpublished federal, state and local documents that it picks up.
To locate health-related topics, search the "Health And Safety" collection. Topics in the drop down box include:
- Data and Information Systems
- Economics and Sociology
- Health Care Measurement Methodology
- Health Services
- Health-related costs
More on NTIS
National Technical Information Service. http://www.ntis.gov/
- Topics: Contains bibliographic descriptions with abstracts for over 3 million items for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business related information including unrestricted technical reports from U.S. and non-U.S. government-sponsored research, development, and engineering analyses. The unpublished U.S. reports are prepared by federal, state, and local agencies and their contractors or grantees. Major areas of coverage include the biological, social, and physical sciences; mathematics; engineering; and business and economics information. Of special interest to health services researchers are the documents on administration and management, behavior and society, biomedical technology and human factors engineering, environmental pollution and control, and health care.
- Librarians will find the library and information sciences a rich resource for this domain. Includes announcements of computer-readable software and data files, U.S. government-owned inventions available for licensing; selected reprints, federally sponsored translations; and some non-English-language technical reports. Documents are for sale.
- Just to get a sense of the type of resources available from NTIS, try a search of their database on quality AND "cancer care" - or on some other topic of interest to you. How many documents were retrieved? How helpful are the abstracts? The full record? Could you reach the authors if necessary for followup?
- Does NTIS contain records of audiovisuals? Can you screen audiovisuals on the site? (hint: check out the Product Types link).
- Does NTIS's database include training materials? On which topics and for which audience/s?
- When would you go to NTIS for documents? Explain.
- Is the fact that these documents must be purchased a barrier to their use? Describe why or why not.