Thursday 11 February 2010

Creating a search strategy

Before you begin searching electronic databases you need to define the topic you are researching. By establishing a clear search strategy you can reduce the amount of time you spend searching and find the most relevant materials.

Identify your keywords...
Start by looking at your topic / assignment title / research question. What are the key words & phrases? Identify all the terms you need to answer the question. From there, consider any alternative spellings (pediatric / paediatric), and any synonyms (related terms). You may want to simply write a list of possible terms.

Connect your terms...
When you come to search within a database you will need to connect your key terms together. You do this using 'Boolean Operators' - the words AND, OR, NOT.

AND: connecting two terms together with AND means that both must be included in the result. This will make your search more specific and reduce the number of results returned. e.g. "heart attack AND obesity" 

OR: connecting terms with OR will retrieve results that mention either so you will get a large number of results. OR searches are useful where you have synonyms or related terms and want to search for results mentioning any. e.g. "child OR children OR pediatric OR paediatric".

NOT: using a NOT search will exclude a specific topic from your results. Be careful not to exclude a topic that may actually be useful. e.g. "cancer NOT lung".


Too many results?
You may need to narrow down your search by linking keywords together using the AND boolean operator. Some databases also allow you to apply 'limits' such as excluding papers that are too old or not written in English.

Too few results?
You may need to widen your search terms. Consider alternative ways of saying the same thing and use the OR boolean operator to extend your search. If you have applied limits you may wish to revist these.

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