Registering as a New User
If you are a first time visitor to the Risk Analysis Center welcome!

We care a lot about our members and people who want to develop in the scientific field, so we advise you to use academic writing services to have quality materials, as well as to be registered so as not to lose additional useful points.

Access is free, but you must register first, if you want to read about Empowering Public Understanding of Everyday Risks, then go directly to the relevant article. If you have not already registered click here.

Registered Users
Regular users simply log in to the Risk Analysis Center by entering your username and password. To log in now click here.

Searching the Risk Abstracts Database
There are two types of search available an Index Search and a Full Text Search.
Hint: Due to the nature of the search mechanism, the Full Text Search is the quicker option.

This approach enables you to select subjects that interest you from a menu of pre-defined major risk categories, sub-categories and keywords. Its like consulting the contents pages or index of a large book, in order to get quickly to the information that you want.

For example, you might want to find abstracts relating to risk factors associated with toxic substances in the environment.

Choose Search from the options provided in the menu to the left of the screen and then click on the option Index search. The abstracts on the Risk Analysis Database are grouped according to six Major Risk Categories: Domestic Risk; Environmental Risk; Health & Nutrition; Occupational Risk; Recreational Risk; and Special Groups & Behaviour. These major Risk categories are made up of a number of risk subcategories.

To begin searching click on one or more of the Major risk categories and subcategories. (Note: choosing a major risk category selects by default all of the subcategories associated with it.) A record of the major risk categories and subcategories chosen by you will appear to the right of the screen.

So, to continue our example, you might choose Toxic and Hazardous Substances which appears as a sub-category of Environmental Risk.

When you click on any of the Risk categories a scroll-down menu will appear which lists, alphabetically, keywords associated with your selected category. This listing is added to with every subsequent category selection.

Choosing keywords
You may refine your search by choosing one or more of the keywords related to the Risk categories/subcategories you have selected. To do this, highlight the required keyword(s) using your mouse and hit Select Keywords below. A record of the keywords chosen by you will appear underneath the keywords box.

To choose multiple selections from the Keywords menu, highlight the required keywords by clicking whilst holding down the CTRL/CMD (on a Mac, the Apple) or SHIFT buttons on your keyboard. (Using the CTRL key allows you to select keywords that are set apart from one another in the list using the SHIFT key allows you to select one or more keywords listed one after another.)

In our example of toxic and hazardous substances in the environment you might actually be interested in particular substances, e.g. arsenic and asbestos. Selecting those from the keywords listing will narrow your search to just those abstracts referring to arsenic and/or asbestos that appear in the Environment: Toxic and Hazardous Substances section of the database. (Note that information on arsenic and asbestos might appear in other parts of the database. To find all references you can either select all six major risk categories or conduct a Full Text search see next section).

Further ways to conduct your search:

• You may adapt your search by specifying particular words in the abstract title.
  This is a quick way to group abstracts by your chosen subject area. But note that although an abstract title aims to encapsulate the main theme of an article relating, for example, to Beef, or Uranium, you wont necessarily pick up abstracts of possible interest to you that include references in the text (as distinct to the title) to beef, uranium (or BSE, radioactivity, etc.)

• You may specify the abstract source All sources; Newspapers & magazines; Scientific, technical, medical; or Other.
  Newspaper & magazine sources result from daily scanning of national newspapers, etc. Scientific, technical, medical sources are leading, usually peer-reviewed, academic and professional journals such as Nature, British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, International Journal of Epidemiology, etc., etc.
  Other sources comprise books, non-reviewed technical papers, miscellaneous reports and releases from government agencies, companies, etc.British Medical Journal,

• You may specify the chronological order by source date in which you wish to display search results.

• You may initially choose to view the abstract titles only.

Hit Search Now if you are satisfied with your selection or Reset Query to begin again.

Search Results
If matching abstracts are found, the title, the abstract text (where View titles only? is not selected), author (where relevant), publication source and publication date are returned.

A record of the number of results returned is displayed at the top of the screen, along with the Major Risk categories, Risk subcategories, keywords and words in the abstract title selected by you for the search. This information will also appear in material you wish to save or print, thus providing a permanent record of your search.

You may choose to view a selected number of abstracts only by clicking on the boxes provided to the left of each abstract title and choosing View Selected at the top/bottom of the results list.

If the number of abstracts returned is large you may wish to use your browsers Back feature to refine the search criteria (e.g.) by specifying keywords or words in the abstract title.

The full text search allows you to specify your own keyword or set of keywords and the whole Risk Analysis Database will be searched to find abstracts containing these keywords.

Choose Search from the options provided in the menu to the left of the screen and then click on the option Full text search. Then, simply type your keyword(s) (separated by commas, if there are more than two) into the query field/s and hit the Search button. Use the Clear button to delete text in the query box and begin again.

Hints
At its simplest a query can be just a word or phrase. For example to find all mentions of 'heart' or 'disease' simply fill in the search field as follows:
(Please note that this is for information purposes only, if you press the search button you will only go to the top of the page)

To narrow your search to the words 'heart' and 'disease', appearing together as 'heart disease', fill in the query form as follows:

Alternatively to narrow your search to 'heart' but to exclude mentions of 'disease' fill in the query form as follows:

The final option is to search for articles that have selected words near to each another, but not necessarily next to each other. In which case please fill in the form as follows:

Search Results
If matching abstracts are found the titles are displayed in groups of up to twenty. A record of the total number of matching abstracts found is displayed at the top of your screen. Each abstract title is a hyperlink which, when you click on it, allows you to access the full text of that abstract. To view other abstracts use your browsers Back to return to the results list and click on the title of the abstract you wish to view.