When searching library databases you do not want to search your entire research question, it is inefficient and will not work well.
1. Identify the keywords that are important.
Use keywords that describe the content you want to find. When you are assigned an essay with suggested research questions, or if you have created your own, first highlight the main keywords that get to the essence of what you want to know. These are often the nouns of the sentence.
To practice, try selecting only the main keywords in the following research questions.
2. Brainstorm synonyms for your keywords
Not every researcher is going to use the same terms that you have when writing their journal articles. In the activity below sort out the keywords you want to use and those that are unhelpful.
3. Use boolean operators to combine your keywords
- Combine similar terms with OR
- Combine different terms with AND
- Put quotations marks around phrases ie. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
- Put an asterisk at the root of a word to search all possible endings eg. Searching: Sprout* will really search: Sprout, Sprouting, Sprouted, Sproutly
Using these operators will greatly improve how many relevant results you get when you search.