Always think about different ways to say the same thing. Start with keywords to describe your topic, within results, read the abstract and look at the subject headings to identify additional keywords to use and revise the search (if needed).
Retrieve too many results? Limit to scholarly articles, limit words to abstract or subject.
Search Strategies:
| "reproductive justice" | "human rights" |
| "racial equity" | "food insecurity" |
| "mental health parity" | "low income" |
| "voting rights" | "student loans" |
| "racial profiling" | "home ownership" |
| environment* = environment or environments or environmental | school* = school or schools |
| minorit* = minority or minorities | "African American*" = African American or African Americans |
| student* = student or students | homeless* = homeless or homelessness |
Using OR
When you use OR between search terms, the database will search for any of them. This is useful if there might be multiple ways to refer to your topic or when any of the words will do
policy or policies
"food insecurity" or "food desert*" or "food security"
college or university
solution* or prevention
"health inequit*" or "health inequality" or "health equity"
race or racial
poor or povery or "low income"
Using AND
When you use AND between two search terms, the database will only show you search results that contain all of those search terms.
"school to prison pipeline" and solution*
"college student*" and "food insecurity"
redlining and "home ownership"
Put it all together:
"school to prison pipeline"
and
race or racial or ethnic*
--------------------------
poor or poverty or "low income"
and
hunger or "food desert*" or "food insecurity"
-------
education or school*
and
funding
and
k-12
-------
"food insecurity" or "food desert*" or "food security"
and
college* or universit*
and
student*
-----
Additional keywords:
solution*
program*
effect*
prevention
impact*
outcome*
law or legislation
policy or policies
In addition, you can search by a known author / or follow the author link in results
Searching is trial and error!
Take these two searches:
"health inequalit*" or "health inequit*" or "health equity"
and
lgbt* or homosexual* or lesbian* or transgender
OR
health
and
inequalit* or inequit* or equity or equitable
and
lgbt* or homosexual* or lesbian* or transgender
Each search will produce different results = there will be some overlap
