| MCH
Thesaurus: Introduction
This third edition
of the Maternal and Child Health Thesaurus was developed by the Maternal
and Child Health Library, National Center for Education in Maternal
and Child Health (NCEMCH), at Georgetown University, under Cooperative
Agreement U02MC00001 with the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB),
Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services. The Maternal and Child Health Bureau reserves a
royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to use the work for
federal purposes and to authorize others to use the work for federal
purposes.
Comments about this
edition or suggestions for future editions of the thesaurus are welcome,
and can be directed to the compiler at opickett@ncemch.org or
by calling (202) 784-9776.
The purpose of developing
this thesaurus is to provide the maternal and child health (MCH) professional
community with a standard vocabulary in MCH program development and
management, including health services, research, training, and program
administration. The vocabulary focuses on public health; clinical medical
terms such as the names of diseases and therapeutic procedures are
excluded except when they are germane to public health or MCH. The
vocabulary contained here will allow for the indexing and retrieval
of a wide variety of materials including government documents, technical
reports, educational materials, audiovisual materials, programs, and
grants. The thesaurus will be useful to MCH resource centers, libraries,
special collections, and databases in organizations such as government
agencies; universities and schools of public health; nonprofit and
professional organizations that provide information to health professionals,
families, and the public; special projects funded by MCHB; and other
agencies with programs funded under Title V of the Social Security
Act.
Core topics in this
thesaurus are (1) women's health, with a primary focus on pregnancy
and maternal health; (2) infant, child, and adolescent health; (3)
oral health; (4) nutrition; (5) injury and violence prevention; (6)
chronic illnesses and disabilities, as related to the MCH population;
(7) care of children and adolescents with special health care needs;
(8) genetics; and (9) public health programs and services.
The thesaurus contains
3,905 terms.
Development
of the Thesaurus
The second edition
of the MCH thesaurus was developed and published by the National Maternal
and Child Health Clearinghouse (NMCHC) in 1996. The first edition of
the thesaurus was developed by the National Center for Policy Coordination
in Maternal and Child Health at the Institute for Child Health Policy,
University of Florida, and NMCHC and published in 1991. The MCH Library
has used these editions and previous keyword lists to index MCHLine®,
the library catalog, and the library's Organizations Database. A subset
of the vocabulary has been used to index the library's MCH Projects
Database and MCHB's Title V Information System. Starting in 2005, MCHB's
Discretionary Grants Information System is using the complete list
of terms from the MCH Thesaurus.
When this edition
was initiated, staff compared terms in the second edition with terms
that had been used in the library databases; terms that had never been
used were considered for deletion. In particular, many names of diseases
and disorders and names of medical equipment and procedures were deleted.
Since 1996, staff have maintained a list of suggested new terms, and
these terms were also reviewed and incorporated as necessary.
Staff consulted numerous
other thesauri to determine the best way to express new concepts for
the thesaurus. In particular, staff used Medical Subject Headings,
developed and published by the National Library of Medicine, and the Thesaurus
of ERIC Descriptors, developed by the U.S. Department of Education's
Educational Resources Information Center and published by Oryx Press.
Thesauri in specialized fields such as population and demographics,
psychology, health education, nutrition, and nursing were also consulted.
Staff also utilized the American National Standards Institute's Guidelines
for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri
(ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2003).
The thesaurus was
developed using the TCS-8 software from WebChoir, previously the Lui-Palmer
Thesaurus Construction System. The thesaurus has been posted to the
MCH Library Web site by the MCH Library's Information Technology team
and is located at http://www.mchthesaurus.info.
Notes
for the User
Term Form
Conventions
The MCH Thesaurus consists of preferred and nonpreferred terms.
The preferred terms, commonly known as descriptors, consist of one or
more words that represent a single concept and are used in indexing the
library's databases. Nonpreferred terms are not used in indexing but
are provided to guide searchers to the descriptor that has been selected
for indexing the same concept. For example, Adolescents has been selected
as a preferred term and there is a cross reference to it from the nonpreferred
terms Juveniles and Teenagers. Both preferred and nonpreferred terms
are alphabetized on a word-by-word basis in all thesaurus lists. Word-by-word
means that descriptors beginning with a shorter word come before descriptors
beginning with a longer word that starts with the same letters as the
shorter word. For example, Access to prenatal care comes before Accessible
facilities.
Terms are expressed
as nouns or noun phrases (terms with more than one word). Noun phrases
are expressed in natural word order (e.g., Premature infants, not Infants,
premature). The plural form is used when a descriptor can be quantified
(e.g., Child health programs, Interviews) and the singular form is
used when a descriptor designates a process, activity, or condition
(e.g., Nursing, Pregnancy). Phrases with prepositions are used only
when the concept cannot be well expressed another way (e.g., Emergency
medical services for children). Abbreviations are used for concepts
that have become well known by their abbreviations (e.g., HIV, AIDS).
Term Definitions
Standard dictionary definitions are assumed to apply to the terms selected
for inclusion in the thesaurus. Scope notes are occasionally provided to
clarify ambiguous or less-known terms or to provide guidelines for using
them in indexing and searching.
Thesaurus
Sections
The MCH Thesaurus consists of the following sections:
- An alphabetical
list of descriptors and nonpreferred terms showing relationships
for each term.
- A rotated list
of descriptors that provides an alphabetic index to terms under each
significant word contained in the term.
- Subject categories
that display terms according to 21 broad categories.
1. Alphabetical
List
The alphabetical list is the most comprehensive display in the thesaurus. It
provides a variety of information for each term, as shown in this example (abbreviated
from the full thesaurus entry):
Adolescents
SN Persons
between puberty and maturity
UF Juveniles
Teenagers
BT Age groups
NT Adolescent females
Adolescent males
Adolescent parents
Adolescents with special health
care needs
RT Adolescent development
Adolescent health
Adolescent pregnancy
Juvenile delinquents
Youth
Youth development
The meaning of the
abbreviations is as follows:
SN: Scope
Note. A Scope Note provides information on the descriptor's
intended use. The Scope Note may provide a definition of the descriptor,
distinguish between descriptors that have overlapping meanings in
natural language, clarify or restrict the descriptor's use within
the field of MCH, or offer guidelines for indexing or searching.
UF: Used
For. A Used For reference identifies nonpreferred terms
that represent varied forms of the preferred term, such as synonyms,
nonpreferred variants, abbreviations or acronyms, and spelled-out
versions of abbreviations and acronyms. Used For references may also
represent specific terms that are indexed under a more general term.
Used For references are not to be used in indexing or searching.
Each Used For term appears separately in the alphabetical list as
a USE reference that sends the user back to the preferred term, for
example,
Juveniles USE Adolescents
BT: Broader
Term. A Broader Term indicates a class or a whole to which
the descriptor belongs. To reduce complexity and confusion in the
thesaurus, only Broader Terms that are one level up in the hierarchy
are shown. A term may have more than one Broader Term, each of which
is at equal levels of the hierarchy, for example,
Workplace health
promotion
BT Corporate
programs
Health promotion
NT: Narrower
Term. A Narrower Term indicates members of the class indicated
by the descriptor (generic relationship), a concept inherently included
in the descriptor (whole-part relationship), or an individual instance
of the category represented by the descriptor (instance relationship),
for example,
Food NT Dairy products
(generic)
Medicine NT Pediatrics (whole-part)
Federal legislation NT Public Health Service Act (instance)
The Broader Term-Narrower
Term relationship is reciprocal.
RT: Related
Term. A Related Term has a close conceptual relationship
to the main term but does not have the direct class/subclass relationship
of Broader Terms and Narrower Terms. Related Term references help
users by reminding them of other terms that they may want to use
in indexing or searching. Related Term references and their main
terms are reciprocals of one another.
2. Rotated
Term List
The rotated term
list is designed to help searchers identify terms that share a common
word or phrase. It lists each preferred term from the thesaurus by
each significant component word in the term. For example, the term
Child health is listed twice, once under Child and once under Health.
Insignificant words such as prepositions (e.g., for, of, with) are
not included, so the term Conflict of interest is listed under Conflict
and Interest, but not under Of. Terms sharing the same component word
are listed alphabetically at that word. For example, terms containing
the word Children are arranged like this:
Children
Abandoned children
Adopted children
Children
Children with special health care needs
Foster children
Young children
The rotated term
list includes only valid descriptors (preferred terms). It does not
include lead-in terms (nonpreferred terms) that are included in the
alphabetical list to assist searchers in finding the preferred term
for a concept. For example, the alphabetical list includes this entry:
Teenagers USE Adolescents. The word Adolescents is in the rotated list,
but the word Teenagers is not.
The header word
for each group of terms is a valid descriptor only if the same word
is included in the list of terms under the header word. For example,
Children is a valid descriptor because it is included in the list above.
In this entry
Ability
Spatial ability
Verbal ability
the word Ability
is not a valid descriptor by itself because it is not included in the
list of terms.
3. Subject
Categories
The subject categories
are a system of broad categories into which all descriptors are grouped.
The purpose of these categories is to provide an easy access point,
especially for searchers who are unfamiliar with the terms included
in the thesaurus. Each term in the thesaurus is assigned to only one
subject category. These lists include preferred and nonpreferred terms,
so it is important to check the alphabetical list before using a term.
The subject categories
are
Agencies and Organizations
Chemicals and Drugs
Diseases and Disorders
Diagnosis and Intervention
Economics and Politics
Education and Training
Facilities and Buildings
Field, Discipline, and Occupational Groups
Geography
Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Health Services Management
Law and Legal Issues
Nutrition and Food
Psychology and Development
Population Groups
Program Types
Research and Data
Reproduction and Genetics
Social and Demographic Issues
Service Types
Technology, Information, and Publications
Web Enhancements
The
Web version of this thesaurus, posted at http://www.mchthesaurus.info,
includes the PDF version of this document, plus the following:
The
Alphabetical List and the Rotated List are broken down into 26
segments that are browsable independently. For example, to find terms
related
to Children, users can click on the C at the top of either list and
bypass the earlier parts of the alphabet.
The Subject Categories
are displayed in three ways.
- Alphabetical
Version
The alphabetical version displays terms within the subject category
alphabetically. Users can select a letter of the alphabet
to see terms that begin with
that letter, and then can click on any term to see the full
listing for that term.
- Hierarchical Version
The hierarchical version displays all terms in the subject category
arranged by broad terms, with the narrower terms related
to each broader term
appearing indented underneath the broader term. Bullet
points preceding each word indicate the relative levels of
the hierarchy,
as shown
in this example from the Population Groups category (abbreviated
from
the full thesaurus entry):
Groups
• Age groups
• • Children
• • Grandparents
• • Parents
• • • Fathers
• • • • Adolescent fathers
• • • • Single fathers
• • • Mothers
• • • • Adolescent mothers
• • • • Single mothers
- Expandable Version
The expandable version displays only terms at the top level of
the hierarchy, with an option to click on a plus sign to see
the narrower
terms that are related to that term.
Users can select
the hierarchical or the expandable version from the navigation bar
at the bottom of
the Web page. In
both versions, users
can click on any term to see the full listing for that
term. These versions are best viewed in Internet Explorer on
both PCs and Apple
computers.
The Web version of the thesaurus also provides a
search box for searching MCHLine®, the library's
online catalog.
Return to MCH Thesaurus

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