Health promotion and Global Development

Oria identifies all books available to us, both ebooks and physical books. See our pages for more information on how to search in Oria. 

Books aiming to present an overview on a specific topic or subject area, are often books, with “Handbook of…” in the title. For more information, go to “Reference works and reviews” 

 Ebook platforms can be searched directly for additional search functionality: 

• PsycBOOKS  These are books published by the American Psychological Association. Search terms will identify book chapters as well as books. This database also has many older, classic titles.  

• ProQuest Ebook Central Here we have access to books from many publishers. Your search terms will be matched against words in title and full text. This can be especially useful when searching for narrow topics. 

Most journal articles present primary studies or focused theoretical contributions. However some articles are more extensive review articles. For more information, go to “Reference works and reviews” 

You can use Oria to search for journal articles (and order articles we don't have access to), but the advanced search capabilities are somewhat limited. For a thorough search, it is advisable to use specialized databases. Many such databases are available - check our database list, for example, under Medical and Health sciences or Global development. 

Central databases for both subject areas: 

The following databases contain key information about journal articles and other academic publications. You follow links to full text or the library ordering service. 

• Web of Science is a large interdisciplinary database, covering a wide range of subjects from ca. 21000 journals. It contains information about journal articles, books, book chapters, doctoral theses and more.  

• PsycINFO is the most extensive database for psychological literature, indexing more than 2300 journals. It contains journal articles, books, book chapters, doctoral theses and more.  

• MEDLINE (on the PubMed platform) is a central database for medical and health literature, indexing more than 5500 journals. 

• MEDLINE (on the Ovid platform) This is a platform with advanced searching capabilities, especially useful for systematic searches. 

• ProQuest Social Sciences searches many smaller social sciences databases at the same time.  

An important search engine 

• Google Scholar is probably the largest search tool for academic literature. Your search terms will be matched against words in title and full text. Searches can be limited to title, but it`s not possible to limit to title & abstract, which is part of the default setting in most databases. 

• Pros: Easy to do a quick search or find a specific article; good coverage of non-English publications (which are often poorly covered by other databases). 

• Cons: Not suited for advanced searching, or to get a full overview of what is published on a topic. Results can be noisy. And although it aims to be limited to scientific literature, this is not always the case.  

• Recommendation: Use another database as your primary tool for comprehensive and systematic searches, and supplement with Google Scholar when appropriate.  

• Search tips for Google Scholar. 

Norwegian journal articles 

These are often missing from international databases but should be searchable in Oria or Google Scholar. You can also search for articles in NORART, which has advanced searching, or check in Idunn, where you can browse journals published by Universitetsforlaget or Gyldendal Akademisk by subject area. 

Some reference works, encyclopedias and dictionaries are published as books. For these, you can try searching in Oria, or go directly to a relevant platform. Suggested sources: 

• Oria - Use the "Material type" filter to see encyclopedias and dictionaries. 

• Oxford Reference - dictionaries and encylopedias on many topics from Oxford University Press. 

• Oxford Handbooks - in-depth, quality, scholarly research reviews. Browse by subject or use the search function. There are several relevant titles under Political science (e.g., Global Health Politics, Gender and Politics, Politics of International Migration), Psychology (e.g., Acculturation and Health, Social Psychology and Social Justice) and Sociology. These can also be found in Oria. If we don't have access to an electronic copy, check for it in Oria - some are only available as physical books. 

You can search for reviews as you would for journal articles. Most databases have a filter for the results list, where you can choose "review articles". See relevant databases listed in the section above ("Journal Articles").  

Epistemonikos is a valuable resource specialized in systematic reviews. It identifies reviews from many databases, including Cochrane, Medline/Pubmed and PsycInfo. 

Norwegian reports can be found in Oria, as it indexes documents from most Norwegian institutional archives. You will also find several international reports in Oria. 

Google and Google Scholar can also be valuable sources for identifying reports in Norwegian and other languages. 

However, if there is a particularly relevant organization you need reports from, we recommend checking directly on their website also - many websites have a section called "documents", "publications" or "reports" (e.g. regjeringen.no, helsedirektoratet.no, NOVA). 

We have links to several large organizational archives in the database lists for Health sciences and Global development. E.g.: 

• The official document system of the UN 

• The OECD iLibrary 

• The UNESCO digital library 

• The WHO repository 

• Helsebiblioteket (Norwegian), which has a special section for Health promotion 

You can find Norwegian master thesis and PhD dissertations in Oria. Use "Material type" in advanced search to limit your search to master thesis or dissertations. 

If you want to find theses from UiB, you can search in BORA (Bergen Open Research Archive). Here you will find all uploaded works from the Department of Health Promotion and Development, sorted by type. 

Some international works may be found by Oria, but we advise additional searches. For example, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, British doctoral dissertations may be downloadable via ETHOS, from the British Library. 

We have many physical books as well as e-books, covering qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis, which you can search for in Oria and loan from the library. 

We also have access to Sage Research Online, an online platform with a large collection of methodological literature. 

These may be available from specific organisations/archives. For example: 

• Felles datakatalog (Digitaliseringsdirektoratet). This is an official Norwegian archive for datasets from the public (stat, kommune) and private sector. 

• Global health observatory from WHO. Gives access to data and analyses for monitoring the global health situation. The GHO includes the WHO Statistical Information System (WHOSIS). 

• World Bank Open Data - Free and open access to global development data. See guidance for the collections and functions. 

• UNHCR Data - UN Refugee Agency data and statistics 

• Genderstats from the UN 

• Helsedirektoratet - Statistics and health registers in Norway (in norwegian)

• Helsedirektoratet/ Directorate of Health - English pages