Watch: Search Strategies & Techniques
Why Watch This Video?
Learning to create and adjust search strategies is essential to finding relevant and high-quality academic resources without wasting time on irrelevant results. You will :
- Learn to use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to refine their search queries and improve the relevance of their search results
- Apply truncation (asterisk/star symbol) and quotation marks to include variations of search terms and ensure phrases are searched as a whole
By mastering the use of Boolean operators, quotation marks, and truncation, you’ll get better results, recognizing that trial and refinement are essential parts of the research process.
Click to Expand Video Transcript ▾
This video will show you how to develop a basic search string using three practical tools: Boolean operators, quotation marks, and the asterisk or star symbol. These three tools can be used in most databases and will help make sure you are getting the most relevant results for your research without spending hours staring at a computer screen.
The first of these tools is Boolean operators, which involves using the words AND, OR, and NOT. When incorporated into your search strategy, these words are always written in capital letters and can be used as often as you need them.
AND retrieves two different concepts that are used together. For example, an article that talks about caffeine AND sprint performance. OR is useful when it doesn't matter which concept shows up in your search results, as long as one concept is included. For example, searching for teenagers OR young adults will likely provide information on similar types of people, even though you're using different terms.
NOT can remove search results you may not need by filtering out specific words. For example, if you were interested in information on outdoor walking patterns, and kept getting information about treadmill walking, you could search for walking patterns NOT treadmill, which would help to remove some of this information from your list.
Truncation involves the use of the star symbol or asterisk. This symbol comes at the end of your root word, and is helpful if you're using a concept that might have different endings. For example, by using the star symbol at the end of the word teen, you would get results for teen, teens, teenage, teenager, or teenagers without having to type in all of these words separately. You could even use it for a word like Canada by dropping the a. This way, you'd get information that uses the words Canada Canadian or Canadians.
By putting quotation marks around a specific concept or phrase, you will be able to keep these words together in your search. For example, if you didn't put the term heart rate in quotation marks, you could get articles that talk about either of these words separately, bringing up unrelated terms like heart disease, or mortality rate.
Finally, it's important to keep in mind that there is no such thing as a perfect search. Don't be afraid to try different options to see which techniques work best. For more help with developing an effective search strategy, contact your subject librarian or visit any library service desk.