Research Strategy Tips

SUMMARIZE YOUR TOPIC

1. State your topic in a sentence.
   Example: "What effect does television violence have on children?"
   
   
2. Separate the individual concepts.
   Example: Looking at the above sentence, I find three concepts: television, violence, children.

SELECT TERMS/VOCABULARY

1. Think of synonyms and related terms for the individual concepts.
   Example: TV, aggression, hostility, youth, adolescent, young adults, videos, video games...

UTILIZE BASIC SEARCH TECHNIQUES

1. Phrase Searching - to search for words in an exact sequence, put quotation marks around them.
   Example: "young adult"
   
   
2. Truncation - (to shorten) - Many online resources allow you to use an * (asterisk) to retrieve all possible endings of a word.
   Example: comput* will bring up the terms compute, computer, computers, computing, computation, etc.
   
   
3. Boolean Connectors or Operators - these are words that are used to create specific relationships among key words. They are AND, OR, NOT.
   
   AND - finds only documents containing all of the specified words or phrases.
   
   e.g. aids AND treatment finds documents with both the words.
   
   OR - Finds documents containing at least one of the specified words or phrases.
   
   e.g., "early childhood education" OR "preschool education" finds documents containing either of these terms. The documents may or may not contain both search words or phrases.
   
   NOT - Excludes documents containing the specified word or phrase. e.g. "operating system" NOT macintosh
   
   Combining Operators - AND, OR, AND NOT
   Example: chiropractor AND procedures AND NOT products
   
   To group portions of queries together, use parentheses.
   Example: Chiropractor AND (procedures OR treatment)
   
   

MORE SEARCHING TECHNIQUES

+ (PLUS) - Attaching a + to a word requires that the word be found in all the search results. Nospaces between the sign and the keyword.

Compare: inclusion versus inclusion +elementary

- (MINUS SIGN) - Attaching a - in front of a word will exclude the word from all search results.

Compare: rainforests versus rainforest - amazon

t: or title - Searches will be restricted to document titles only.

Compare: transplants versus title:transplants

u: or url - Searches will be restricted to document URL's (addresses) only.

Compare: microsoft versus url:microsoft " " - putting quotes around a set of words will only find results that match the words in that exactsequence.

Compare: red tides versus "red tides"

Combining the Syntax - you can combine any of these search tips as long as they are combined in the proper order. The proper order for using them is the same order that they are listed on this handout. That is:

Example: + - t : (or title) u : (or url:) "" *


KEEP IN MIND: These search tips may not apply to all electronic search tools. They are generally useful with the majority of them, but to get exact guidelines, us the HELP screens located within each search tool.