Search Strategies: Home

Keywords or search terms, are the words that you enter into the database search boxes. They represent the main concepts of your research topic. Without proper keywords, you may have difficulty finding the articles that you need.

Selecting keywords:

• Identify the main concepts of your topic.
• Brainstorm synonyms and antonyms that can be used to describe your topic.
• Spell out abbreviations.
• Your first search may not produce the desired result. It could take many attempts to determine the best keywords for your topic. Be ready to do multiple searches to find the best keywords.

When searching in Google or Bing, you can enter your complete research question in the search box and get results. However, if you enter your entire research question in the Library databases, you most likely won't get any results. This occurs because library databases look for the exact words that you entered in the search boxes. If it doesn't find the exact words in the article, it won't produce any results.

Here is an example research question:

What is the relationship between test performance and the retention of ESL students?

The keywords for this topic are listed below:

• test performance
• retention
• ESL students

Synonyms are words that have the same meaning as another word in the same language. Antonyms are words that have the opposite meaning. Both can be helpful when trying to determine suitable keywords for your research topic.

Some topics may have various terms that can describe them. 

Here are some additional keywords for test performance:

• Tests   
• Exams   
• Test-Taking Skill
• Test Anxiety   
• Academic Achievement   
• Test Preparation

Sometimes it can also help to search the opposite of your topic. If you are interested in student retention, you may also want to look at student dropouts. 

Here are some possible synonyms and antonyms for student retention:

• Student Persistence   
• Graduation Rate   
• Dropouts
• Student Attrition   
• Dropout Prevention

Abbreviations are a shortened form of a word or phrase. For instance, PTSD is an abbreviation for post-traumatic stress disorder. Whenever you search the library databases, you'll always want to spell out abbreviations.

Tips:

Searching for both the abbreviation and the complete word or phrase will help guarantee you are locating all of the relevant results. 

Omit parenthesis when searching for both the abbreviation and the full name.

Phrases:
Use quotation marks to search for exact phrases

Boolean Operators:

• AND narrows your results (because all search terms must be present in the resulting records).
• OR broadens your results (because search results may contain either or both search terms).
• NOT excludes results with whichever search term follows it.

Truncation:

• Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*)
• Enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an *
• Ex: comput* finds results with computer, computing, computation, computational, etc.

Wildcards:

• A wildcard is represented by a question mark (?) or a pound sign (#)
• Using ? as a wildcard will only return results in which the wildcard is replaced by another character (ex: ne?t will find results containing neat, nest or next, but it will not find results with net)
• Using # as a wildcard will return results with or without an extra character (ex: ne#t will find results containing neat, nest, or next as well as results containing net)

During the research process, you will ask yourself, "What type of information will be the most useful for my topic." Thinking about the type of information you are looking for will determine where you will need to look for it and what tools you will need to use.

Examples of different types of information:

• Statistics
• Primary sources or first-person experiences 
• Technical reports or patents
• Scholarly literature (articles)
• Opinion polls
• News stories
• Overviews of a topic (books)
• Government documents, reports, or hearings

You may also want to consider sources outside of the library, such as interviewing knowledgeable individuals, businesses, etc.