PTA Orientation

ALWAYS CHECK YOUR ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USING A WEB SITE AS A SOURCE. IN CASE OF DOUBT, ASK YOUR INSTRUCTOR.

PTA students must take care to only use reputable articles published within the last 5 years when searching for web sources. The two limiters discussed below will make your searches much more focused and save you time sorting through unreliable and/or outdated results.

Limiting by domain (e.g. .com, .net., .edu, etc...) can help you eliminate many unreliable or commercial results that may provide misinformation. Generally, .gov, .edu, and .org web sites are the most reliable; however, you must always check the source to confirm (contact a librarian or your instructor if you are unsure). To limit your searches to a particular domain, simply type site:[enter domain here] after your search string in Google. For example, the search traction and physical therapy returns over 11 million results in Google, while the search

       traction and physical therapy site:.edu

returns 75,000. This eliminated results from Wikipedia, Healthline, any other site with a non-.org domain.

You can further limit your results by date by clicking on the "Tools" button underneath the Google search box. Once you click on that, an "Any Time" drop-down menu will appear beneath the search box. Select "Custom range" as shown below:

Simply enter your date range into the pop-up box, click "Go" and your results list will update: