LibAnswers: Nursing Research FAQs

Inclusion criteria is everything that must be present in an article to make it eligible for inclusion as part of your research. Exclusion criteria meanwhile are the elements in an article that disqualify it from being included as part of your search. Search Limits are the specific limits that you set using the available options in a database or search engine, like Peer-Reviewed search results only, the publication date range, full text articles only, etc.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria are criteria that you personally decide on and set before you begin to search. They will often overlap with search limits – for example, you can choose to exclude any articles that are older than five years, and you can also limit your search results in a database to only articles that were published in the last five years.