CUG Libraries - Research Techniques: Search Techniques
Search Techniques
There are several common search techniques that you can apply to almost any database - including Locate and other databases linked to on your subject guides. Searching databases for journal articles is a little different to searching using internet search engine like Google, so it is important to be aware of common search techniques.
The techniques described in this section will enable you to quickly retrieve relevant information from the thousands of records in a database. You can combine the tips on this page to create highly effective searches.
Remember that you can get help, advice, tips and support tailored to your needs from the librarians at your site. Just pop into the library and ask, send us an email, or join one of the workshops run online across the University Group.
Research Topic: Identifying Key Concepts
In order to get the best and most relevant search results you need to pick out the key concepts from your research topic or question. These are the main ideas that you will be researching.
Here is an example of a topic:
Do business organisations have moral responsibilities?
If we search for this as it is we won't get the best results for a few reasons:
- There are some words used which won't work effectively when searching databases.
- There are other words which could be used to describe the topics contained in this question.
The first thing we want to do is take out the words that make the sentence readable but don't mean anything without context (a computer has no context to interpret these words, so they will lead to lots of irrelevant results); this is usually any words like 'the' 'have' 'to' etc. We just want the words that represent the key ideas:
Do business organisations have moral responsibilities?
So, business organisations and moral responsibilities are the key concepts here.
Keywords
Keywords are words or short phrases that represent the main ideas (key concepts) in your research topic or question.
In search engines like Google, you can search using full sentences. However, some Library databases are not as smart as Google and do not understand full sentences, spelling mistakes or conversational language. This means that when you are searching, you need to break your topic into keywords instead - you have to consider the words that authors are using to write about a topic.
If you are writing an assignment on the moral obligations of businesses, your key concepts (main ideas) could be: morality, moral obligations, businesses, business organisations.
For each key concept, try to think of as many similar or related words as possible. This can include:
- synonyms (words with the same or similar meanings)
- broader/related terms (words that expand or widen your topic, more general than synonyms)
- narrower terms (niche or specialist terms to really hone in on a specific area or research)
When you search for sources using a range of different keywords, you will find more search results that are relevant to your topic.
Once you have found your keywords, you can combine them using the Boolean Operators AND, OR and NOT, as described below.
Key Database Operators
Boolean operators connect your search words together to either narrow or broaden your set of results. You can combine multiple Boolean operators to create more effective searches.
Boolean operators form the basis of database logic. You do not need to use them on sites such as Google (and Locate does not require them in the basic search screen), but they usually required for academic databases full of journals.
The three basic Boolean operators are: AND, OR, and NOT. Further operators may also be available, depending on the database you are using.
AND
Use AND in a search to:
- narrow your results
- tell the database that ALL search terms must be present in the resulting records
- example: diet AND obesity: your results will include both words
OR
Use OR in a search to:
- connect two or more similar concepts (synonyms)
- broaden your results, telling the database that ANY of your search terms can be present in the resulting records
- example: diet OR nutrition
NOT
Use NOT in a search to:
- exclude words from your search
- narrow your search, telling the database to ignore concepts that may be implied by your search terms
- example: obesity NOT child
Depending on the database you are using, you may have access another operator to explain what you are looking for to the computer). This is called proximity searching.
Proximity searches look for one word or term which appears close to another word or term.
If you search for articles on tax reform using the usual AND operator, tax AND reform, the words could appear anywhere in an article. Instead of AND, we can use proximity.
Tax n5 reform will limit results to articles where the two terms appear within five words, or n5, of each other. These results are more likely to be relevant.
Proximity search functions vary from database to database. They might not be available, or they might use different symbols or phrasing to use the operator. For example:
- EBSCO databases use n5
- ProQuest databases use NEAR/5
- Westlaw uses /5
(In each case, you can replace '5' with the number of words you'd like to use).
Phrase Searching With "Quotation Marks"
Some databases assume that words typed next to each other should be searched as phrases. However, many databases do not do this. Most academic databases automatically put a Boolean AND between your search terms: meaning that all the words you enter into the search will be present in your search results, even if only one of the words is in a document.
For example, if you search for living standards, you will get results for everything that has the individual words 'living', and 'standards' but not necessarily the most relevant results where the two words appear together as a phrase. When this happens, your search results may not be useful for your research focus, and you end up with a lot of results to look through.
To avoid this happening, you can use "double quotation marks" to keep words together when you search. If you do this, only results where these words appear together are shown.
Truncation
Truncation (or 'wildcards') is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings.
To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol (normally an asterisk) at the end. The database will return results that begin with the letters that you entered.
nurs* finds: nurse, nurses, nursing
child* finds: child, children, childhood, childbirth
manag* finds: manage, manages, manager, management etc.
midwi* finds: midwife, midwives, midwifery
On some databases, you can also use a wildcard in the middle of a word to include both English and American spellings
e.g. col*or or organi*ation
Tip! Be careful not to truncate too soon.
e.g. leg* or comp* will retrieve too many false results