Respond to these discussion posts below by offering suggestions/strategies for working with this database from your own experience or offering ideas for using alternative resources.

Respond to these discussion posts below by offering suggestions/strategies for working with this database from your own experience or offering ideas for using alternative resources.

250 words for each discussions post each. APA format. 2 in text citation each and 2 references each 

Discussion post 1

I found a peer-reviewed article about how the health of incarcerated individuals and the care they receive impacts the health of their

community (Uggen et. al, 2023). To find this article, I used the search words “incarceration” and “health” using the Boolean operator “AND” to broaden

my search. Boolean operators serve to narrow or expand a search (Walden University Library, n.d.a).  I chose to search for literature using these two

words because, upon becoming a nurse practitioner, part of my job will include caring for the incarcerated population at my local county jail. I have

interest in learning about how medical care provided to the incarcerated population impacts the health of inmates and the greater community.

               Library databases are useful for clinical research because they allow researchers to narrow their search using database limiters (Walden

University, n.d.b). The database I used to search for the article was ScienceDirect. I only had one problem with my search, which took me a couple

minutes to solve. Initially, my results were limited because I only typed one year into the “Year(s)” search box. I wasn’t sure how to enter more than one

year as ScienceDirect’s search engine is different than search engines I have used in the past. I wasn’t satisfied with my initial results. I then searched

for articles from the last five years by typing “2018-2023”; this significantly expanded the number of articles for my search.

               ScienceDirect would be useful to colleagues because it holds a vast number of articles to choose from. It contains more than 19 million

scientific articles and chapters from more than 2,650 different peer-reviewed journals (Elsevier, n.d.). I found the search engine easy to use because it

allowed me to enter multiple search words to narrow my search. It also allowed me to refine my search based on specific criteria and it allowed me to

sort my results by relevance or date. I would recommend this database to others because it contains only peer-reviewed literature (Elsevier, n.d.).  

discussion post 2

The purpose of scholarly writing is to uncover and present evidence that will reveal the truth.” (Walden University LLC, Producer,

2018). To cite a scholarly article, a person must understand what the meaning of it is and what the person critiquing should be looking for.

According to Al-Jundi and Sakka (2017), they provide a checklist of ten standard questions to help critically appraise a peer-reviewed

article. I was able to review the article to answer the questions based on the 10 standard common questions by Al-Jundi and Sakka

(2017) to know that my article met the criteria for a scholarly peer-reviewed article. This led me to the article “All Social Media Are Not

Created Equal: Instagram, Finsta, and Loneliness" in Walden library. My article goes over the study conducted by Schoenfeld and Fiori

(2021) and how they found that Instagram usage and other social media platforms are related to loneliness. This interests me because

networking is done through social media, and this is one way to get people help if they are having mental health issues or encourage them

to seek it themselves. It also interests me because I have seen people close to me go through this on various levels. People are more likely

to reach out to their peers, even strangers, before they go to an actual facility to seek help due to the stigmatism around out.

        At first, going through the Walden library was not easy. I had to watch the videos provided this week in the resources tab. I had to

follow the guidelines from Walden University's library on "Evaluating resources: Journal" (Walden University Library, 2019). I limited my

search to peer-reviewed journals regarding mental health. By doing this, it helped narrow down my search of journals, and I was able to

look and choose from there. I would recommend searching through the Walden library database after taking a tutorial on how to use it or

talking with the librarian because this can be a little overwhelming and confusing to navigate. The library has many resources to help

guide your search so you can find what you are looking for. You just need to have time and patience and know who you can ask if you

need help.