Information for Your Assignments

If you are new to university and are feeling a bit daunted by your first assignment, use these tips to help you to find the right information to get you started:

  • Identify your Question

Make sure you understand what information you need; breakdown the question into separate parts if you can; are you being asked to do a PICO analysis - find out what this is.

  • Do you need to describe your search strategy?

How have you decided to look for the information you need? What resources did you select? What search terms did you decide to use and why? Check out our Find the Information tutorial to learn how to do this and use our Literature Search Plan to help you to develop your ideas.

  • Start with the book collection

You can search our online catalogue or browse your subject area for background information and established theories. If you are not sure how to use the catalogue try one of our quick tutorials.

  • Look for guidelines and reviews

Good quality, appraised evidence will be discussed in guidelines and reviews, thus incorporating new research into recommendations. You can start looking by using the NHS Evidence search engine. More search tools are available on our Literature Searching Sites page.

  • Search in databases for recent journal articles

Use our medical, midwifery or nursing databases to search across thousands of journals for articles in your subject area. We have a number of short videos for you watch to help you use databases.

  • Appraise the Information you have found

Why have you decided to include the information you have selected? Is is good quality? Learn what you need to look out for by reading our Evaluate the Information tutorial.

  • Remember your References

You should include citations and references in your assignments. This will demonstrate the breadth and depth of your reading and avoids plagiarism. Our Using Information section will give you some pointers.

  • Putting it all together

Our Communicating and Study Skills pages will point you in the right direction for help on writing essays.