My email response you can use for Masters of Nursing students looking for qualitative research in CINAHL:
"Hi _______,
I am attaching a handout with some tips for using CINAHL. Feel free to email ask.gerstein@utoronto.ca if you need any assistance with it. [CINAHL 2010 handout is located in the sidebar of the blog])
As for finding qualitative research articles you can copy and paste this text and search for it in CINAHL (**Make sure you UNCHECK the box that says 'Suggest Subject Terms' before searching for this. That will allow it to be searched as a phrase**)
(MH "cluster sample+") or TX life experiences or TX human science or TX discourse* analysis or TX narrative analysis or TX lived experience* or TX field research or TX field studies or TX field study or TX giorgi* or TX husserl* or TX merleau ponty* or TX van kaam* or TX van manen* or TX spiegelberg* or TX colaizzi* or TX heidegger* or TX participant observ* or TX data saturat* or TX semiotics or TX heuristic or TX hermeneutic* or TX etic or TX emic or TX focus group* or TX purpos* sampl* or TX constant comparison or TX constant comparative or TX grounded research or TX grounded studies or TX grounded study or TX grounded theor* or TX phenomenol* or TX ethnon* or TX qualitative or (MH "ethnological research") or (MH "ethnography") or (MH "phenomenology") or (MH "focus groups") or (MH "discourse analysis") or (MH "theoretical sample") or (MH "field studies") or (MH "constant comparative method") or (MH "thematic analysis") or (MH "content analysis") or (MH "observational method+") or (MH "purposive sample") or (MH "qualitative validity+") or (MH "grounded theory") or (MH "ethnonursing research") or (MH "phenomenological research") or (MH "ethnographic research") or (MH "qualitative studies")
This will look for all qualitative studies. If you want to, you can modify it and take out any of the terms that you are not interested in finding.
Then you can combine these results with your search subject terms (__[suggest some relevant terms based on their topic]__) in the search history screen.
These terms were found here: http://www.library.vcu.edu/tml/bibs/nursingevidencefilters.html (scroll to bottom)
There's also a good article on search strategies here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/4/5 for your information."
email dated March 25, 2010