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Strategies for searching

Assignment search strategies

Key search terms from your assignment question

Key search terms for your assignment question

Having identified what type of material you want to find (books, journal articles, conference papers etc.) and where you need to look (library catalogue, subject database, or internet), you are ready to experiment with your key words, or key search terms.

Searching for phrases, and combining key search terms effectively through the use of Boolean terms, can help you find the best results.  

Search strategies

Search Strategies

Boolean terms can help you to create a strategy by combining or limiting key words and phrases. Boolean searching involves using specific terms (AND, OR, NOT) and symbols ( * , " " ) to build a search string that will help you to retrieve relevant results. These terms and operators can be used to widen or limit your search results.

AND

Use AND for results that contain both of your search terms.

Example: health AND justice

OR

Use OR for results that contain any of the words in your search.

Example: (advances OR innovations)

" "

Use " " to include exact phrases in the search results.

Example: "waste management"

*

Use * to include variations of words in the results. I.e., different word endings.

Example: engineer*

(engineer OR engineers OR engineering)

 

The chart below (click on it to enlarge), shows what to expect with returned results when Boolean terms are used with key search terms.

 

UniSQ Image


Example

In this example, Boolean terms have been applied to an assignment question on communication.
 

The question: Identify and discuss key "communication skills" required for effective teamwork.
 

Expand the search combinations below for explanations of the numbers of results returned and guidance on how a search can progress. 

Searching a multiple word term in most databases (or search engines) will potentially retrieve results in the millions. Why? Because the search engine looks for the words independently, not necessarily in the appropriate context.

Sample results: 1,200,000
 
Context is key to finding relevant material.
Placing the double quotes around a search term ensures the search engine looks only for that phrase, eliminating irrelevant material, and focusing results in context.

Sample results: 200,000
 
Combining your key terms will help focus the context even more, bringing back fewer, more relevant results.

Sample results: 20,000
 
Are you on track?
Combining more terms to better define your context, or experimenting with different terms will give you glimpses of material, from which you need to select the best path to follow.

Sample results: 200
 
As you progress with your experimentation, you may want to refine and re-focus your direction. This can result in a much more focused set of results...

Sample result: 20

...or it can open you up to new possibilities.
As your research progresses, your topic focus may also evolve and your search strategy will change.
While this may often be appropriate, always refer back to the task at hand. Is the information you are locating relevant to the question you have to answer?

Refining results

Refining searches

Once you've located relevant material, most search engines and databases have the facilities to help you further refine results, be that by publication date, peer-review, format or discipline. Look for these features when you're searching, and take full advantage of their features.

At every step of your search, it's crucial to evaluate your results for relevance, and against the criteria of your assignment

Keeping on track

Keeping on track

Reviewing your results as you go is important to ensuring you're on track. Keep track of and record your searches so that you can review how effective they were. You may find that you had too few or too many results.

Keeping track of your searches and the results will help you to refine and revise them. You will have a record of what did and did not work and can use new strategies to widen or limit future searches as needed.