Search Strategies
Research takes time but with practice using the search strategies outlined in the side menu you can:
- create successful searches and find relevant resources
- save time on research and use it to write your assignment
- feel confident you have researched your topic thoroughly, or identify areas that require further research
At the end of Search Strategies see the "Search Strings" section on the side-bar to follow how to create one possible search string to enter into your research tool. But first, work through the search strategies to get an understanding of how they might enhance your search results.
Synonyms
The words you enter into your research tool will give you a result that includes just those words. Most databases will not give you search results with alternative spellings or related terms.
It is "good practice" to identify synonyms and alternative phrases to include in your search strategy.
Start with the keywords from your topic sentence and then identify synonyms and alternative phrases:
How does global warming affect the socio-economic conditions of countries in the Pacific Region?
| Keywords from topic sentence: | Synonyms and alternative phrases: |
|---|---|
| global warming | climate change | rising sea levels | greenhouse gases | climate emergency |
| socio-economic | economic stability | social well-being | livelihoods |
| Pacific Region | Pacific Islands | Oceania |
Have a go below:
Phrase Searching
When you have 2 or more keywords that could form a phrase you can narrow your search result by putting quotation marks around the words.
For example, if you are searching for information on global warming then you are probably looking for those two words to appear right next to each other in the text of the document with no other words in-between.
By putting quotation marks around your search terms you are asking the research tool to search this as a phrase. This is helpful if you need to find an exact phrase (2 or more words together), an exact title, or quotation.
| "global warming" | "climate change" | "rising sea levels" | "greenhouse gases" | "climate emergency" |
As you read your course text or start to find resources that cover your topic, check out how the terms are used in the text. Many subject areas have terminology that is often used in academic articles and books. Other examples of phrases:
| "classroom management" | "learning environment" | "cognitive psychology" |
Truncation
Can be helpful to broaden your search results, save time by not repeating multiple forms of a keyword, include word endings you may not have thought of.
| Truncate: | Search result will include: |
| child* | child | children | children's | childhood | |
| comput* | compute | computer | computers | computing | computation | computational |
| music* | music | musical | musically | muscian | musicians | musicality |
Library Search uses the asterisk (*)
Google Scholar does not utilise truncation symbols, instead it uses automatic stemming. Automatic stemming identifies the 'root' of the keywords used and automatically searches for any additional letters or 'stems'
Individual databases may use any of these symbols: *, !, ?, or # check their help guides
Wildcards
Similar to truncation, except wildcards substitute a symbol for one letter of a word within the word.
This is useful if a word can have a different spelling (American v English) or for some words with similar singular or plural forms of spelling.
| Wildcard | Results |
|---|---|
| colo?r | color | colour |
| harbo?r | harbor | harbour |
| wom?n | woman | women |
Note: wildcard symbols may vary by database, common symbols include: *, !, ?, or # Check the research tool help guide.
Boolean Searching
Joining your keywords and phrases with the Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT
can narrow or broaden your set of results and save time by creating precise search queries.
AND
Using AND narrows down your search results by combining 2 or more keywords or phrases which must all appear in the results list.
For example:
electric AND cars = items that include both these keywords.
Check out these results lists in Library Search and Google Scholar
OR
Using OR broadens your search results as all terms or keywords must appear in the results list.
If you have worked out some synonyms from your original keywords or phrases you can combine them in your search tool with the Boolean operator OR
For example, from our suggested topic above under Synonyms:
How does global warming affect the socio-economic conditions of countries in the Pacific Region?
The synonyms for global warming can be put together in a search string using the Boolean operator OR instead of conducting a number of searches to cover all the possible terms.
Keywords: global warming | climate change | rising sea levels | greenhouse gases | climate emergency
Now combine all the identified synonyms using the Boolean operator OR:
"global warming" OR "climate change" OR "rising sea levels" OR "greenhouse gases" OR "climate emergency"
Note: As the keywords above are common phrases we can put quote marks around the phrases and join each phrase by the
Boolean operator OR
See this example in Library Search it shows the different terms have been included in the results list.
You can even go a step further and combine the OR search with the two other Boolean operators AND or NOT, this will form
a search string. You can check out examples under the section on "search strings" in this guide.
Another example using the Boolean OR:
"college student" OR "university student" for where there may be different terms used around the world.
NOT
Using NOT narrows the search result by excluding keywords that you do not want to appear in your results list.
But use it sparingly as it can also eliminate what might be useful results.
Examples of possible searches using NOT
| cloning NOT sheep |
| festival management NOT (music OR film) |
| (ocean AND pollution) NOT (polar OR pacific) |