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Help for CDC Recommends:

Tips on Searching To narrow your search by date Tips for more Accurate Searching

CDC Recommends:The Prevention Guidelines System is a collection of official guidelines and recommendations approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the prevention and control of disease, injuries, and disabilities. Documents in the collection can be retrieved through a search from the CDC Recommends:The Prevention Guidelines System home page. When a search is performed, the key words of your search criteria will display at the top of the results page with the number of documents found and the number of documents displayed on that page. Documents that meet the specified search criteria will be listed in descending order of relevance, or chronological order by date of publication or review. The results will also include the document title, id number, and publication date for each document. The results list will display twenty documents per page. To view a document in the list of search results, click on the document title. The entire document (or in some instances a brief summary or description of the document and a link to the website containing either the full document in .html or .pdf format) is displayed on this page. There are two links at the bottom of the page: Top and Back. Click Top to return to the top of the page. Click Back or use your browser's back button to return to the search results page. To view the next page of search results, click Next (located on the right end of the gray bar) or click a page number on the gray bar. For example, if search results 1 through 20 are displayed on the page, clicking Next or clicking "2" after No. of Pages:, will display results 21 through 40. Click Previous to return to the previous page of search results. To return to the search results after viewing a document, click Back at the bottom of the document or click the browser's Back button. To return to the home page from the search results, either click the browser's Back button or click New Search. New Search will reset the search criteria fields to the default settings. Please note: documents will be deleted or archived over time as new guidelines are published, therefore bookmarks to specific documents in the database will be broken if the documents have been deleted or archived.

Tips on Searching

To search for specific words, type the words separated with spaces in the box next to Search for. Click on the Search button to process the results. To cancel your selection, click on the Cancel button. Searches are performed in three ways: by selecting all of the words, any of the words, or the exact phrase from the Results should contain pull-down list. All of the words (the default setting) will find documents that contain each of the key words entered in the Search for box. This search replaces the use of the Boolean operator "and". For example, to find documents that contain both listeria and prevention, enter both words and select all of the words. Any of the words will find documents that contain one or more of the key words. This search replaces the use of the Boolean operator "or". For example, to find documents that contain listeria or pneumonia, or both words, enter those words and select any of the words. The exact phrase will find documents that contain the exact phrase you entered. For example, to find documents that contain the phrase lung cancer, enter that phrase and select the exact phrase. By selecting one of these options you can either refine or broaden your search criteria. The default setting performs a search for All of the words. To select your search order, Click the relevance button to order your search results in descending order of relevance. The relevance search will retrieve all documents that contain the specific key words typed in, excluding the words "and", "or", "the", "a", "I", "near", "is", and "this". Or click the date button to order your search results by descending order of publication/review date. The date search utilizes fuzzy logic and may retrieve a broader selection of documents. This search will retrieve documents in which the key words are preceded by a prefix or followed by a suffix. For example, a search for "Cancer" will retrieve all documents containing the words precancerous and cancerous as well as those containing the word cancer. Click on the Search button to process the results. To cancel your selection, click on the Cancel button. Note: it is not necessary to enclose the phrases or words in double quotes. The search engine is not "case sensitive"; for example, typing a word in capital letters will retrieve the same result set as the same word in lower case.

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To narrow your search by date, specify a publication date or range of dates.

To search for documents published on a specific date, enter the date in mm/dd/yyyy format in the box next to Date of Document and select specific date from the pull-down list. To search for documents published within a range of dates, enter the starting date and ending date separated by a colon, i.e. mm/dd/yyyy:mm/dd/yyyy and select specific date from the pull-down list. To search for all documents published before or after a specific date, enter the date in mm/dd/yyyy format and select and after or and before from the pull-down list. By default, the system will search for words within the entire document (including references). To narrow your search even further, search for words that appear within document titles only by selecting the Title (only) button. Click on the Search button to process the results or click on Cancel to cancel the operation. The system will automatically display your search criteria at the top of the search results page, followed by the total number of documents that met your criteria

Tips for more Accurate Searching:

If too many search results are found, try using the Title (only) button. Documents containing the specified search words in the title are likely to be more relevant to your criteria. If you ordered the results by date and the search was too broad, try the same search using relevance ranking. For example, if a date-order search for "TB" retrieves documents containing the word "outbreak", do the same search with relevance ranking. If too few search results are found after entering several words in the Search for box, try using the any of the words option or enter fewer words in the Search for box.

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