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:
Using Quotation Marks
Using quotation marks means that the database will search for the entire phrase, not the individual words.
| "wage gap" | "human rights" |
| "minimum wage" | "food insecurity" |
| "political participation" | "border security" |
| "voting rights" | "student loans" |
Using *
When you place an asterisk at the end of a search term it searches for words with any possible ending
| environment* = environment or environments or environmental | immigra* = immigrant or immigrants or immigration |
| citizen* = citizen or citizens or citizenship | leader* = leader or leaders or leadership |
| student* = student or students | college* = college or colleges |
| recycl* = recycle or recycling | refugee* = refugee or refugees |
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
"social media" or twitter or facebook
policy or policies
"food insecurity" or "food desert*" or "food security"
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.
"disengaged youth"
and
program*
and
effect*
-------
immigra*
and
policy or policies or legislation
-------
"food insecurity" or "food desert*" or "food security"
and
college* or universit*
and
student*
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Additional keywords:
law or legislation
policy or policies
"government policy
specific countries
In addition, you can search by a known author / or follow the author link in results
