Help for Students

Last update: 3 November 2009,
by Maureen Bell

On this page are some resources which you may find useful for essay writing, including guides to evaluating literature and Internet resources, and links on literature review and survey methods, and how to cite references correctly. I am not including print resources from the library's own collection as they can be found by consulting the catalogue.

Help for Essays

The university has a special site which provides detailed advice and help on how to avoid plagiarism

Michigan Informatics: Informatics for the Public Health Workforce
MI-INFO (Michigan Informatics) is a series of online tutorials on health information and computer skills designed to support academic public health informatics programs and public health outreach training initiatives.

Below are to pages which will give you some hints for searching Medline (and sometimes other databases) for specific essay topics. You can either print them out, so that you can have them in front of you while you work, or open a second browser, so that you can flip between the screen where you are doing your search, and the screen with the instructions.

Lung cancer in foundry workers

Work stress and cardiovascular disease

Evaluating Sources

Evaluating Internet information
A useful page from Johns Hopkins University.

How to Read an Article
Our own tips on evaluating journal articles.

How to Read a Medical Journal Article
By Steve Simon, a biostatistician at the Office of Medical Research, Children's Mercy Hospital, Kansas City.

How to Read a Paper - A Series of Articles from the BMJ
This series of articles by Trisha Greenhalgh was published in the BMJ in 1997 to assist readers in evaluating journal literature.

Making Sense of Research
From the Global Health Council, an overview of critical appraisal skills.

Published criteria for evaluating health related web sites: review
Kim et al. Published criteria for evaluating health related web sites: review
BMJ 1999, 318 (7184): 647-649

Literature Review and Survey Methods

How To Do A Literature Review
From the Ferdinand D Bluford Library, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

RMIT - Literature Review
From the RMIT UNiversity Library.

Sites Related to Survey Research
From the Survey Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago.

What is a Survey
From the American Statistical Associaton's Survey Research Methods Section, a booklet which is designed to promote a better understanding of what is involved in carrying out sample surveys - especially those aspects that have to be taken into account in evaluating the results of surveys.

Style Guides

The Library has a general Style Guides page, as well as a detailed introduction to the Author-date (Harvard) referencing system. Other sites of interest are listed below.

A Guide to Harvard Referencing (Leeds Metropolitan University)
The Harvard or author-date system of referencing is described here. It is one of the commonly used systems, but there are several versions which differ slightly from one another. Included is a section on citing electronic resources.

Harvard Style examples
From Monash University.

Public Health Image Library, CDC, Atlanta, GA
A collection of images on a wide variety of topics. Many of them can be downloaded.

Purdue Online Writing Lab
This site from Purdue University has some useful features including over 130 instructional handouts including Help with English as a Second Language (ESL).

Referencing guides
Guidelines, from the University of South Australia's Learning Connection, for using various referencing conventions.

Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals also referred to as the Vancouver Guidelines.

Vancouver Style examples
From Monash University.