Search Strategy
Here is a good, basic formula for getting started with your research:
- Begin by narrowing down your topic and developing an initial research question.
- Use the keyword brainstorming worksheet to help you tweak your research question, identify keywords and related terms, and keep track of what you find.
- Search in a library catalog (Summon, OBIS, OhioLINK and/or WorldCat) to find books and reference sources. These sources will:
- provide BACKGROUND and CONTEXT
- REVIEW and SUMMARIZE earlier work
- help you FOCUS your topic and
- provide CITATIONS to important books, journal articles, conference papers, interviews, etc.
- Next, search research databases to find articles. The library has hundreds of databases; those listed on this guide are good places to begin.
- You may also wish to use Google Scholar to search the Internet. This is a great tool for doing cited reference searches.
Basic Database Search Techniques
| Concept | Explanation | Example |
| Phrase search (quotes required) |
search for an exact phrase (most, but not all, databases use quotation marks) | “death penalty” “standardized test” “reality TV” |
| Boolean logic (for keyword searching) | use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) for more precise searching |
See following examples |
| AND | search for records that have all of the words (narrows the search) |
race and poverty drug use and educational attainment |
| OR | search for records that have any of the words (broadens the search) |
homosexual or gay or lesbian or queer china or japan or korea |
| NOT | exclude records that have the word (narrows the search) | advertising not (TV or television) |
| Truncation | search for a root word with any ending (most, but not all, databases use an asterisk *) | adolescen* [finds adolescent, adolescents, adolescence] |
Additional Database Techniques
| Concept | Definition | Example |
| Complex Boolean Search | place search words for the same concept in the same search box (or in parentheses) |
(spous* or wife or wives or husband* or domestic partner*) and (abus* or batter* or violen*) |
| Proximity | require words to appear within a certain distance of each other n (for “near”) = words can appear in any order w (for “within”) = words must appear in specified order | poverty n4 mental health african w2 american* (n# and w# indicate the maximum number of intervening words) note: if no quotes or proximity connectors or are used, Ebsco defaults to w5 |
| Field qualification (field limiting) | require words to appear in a certain field in the database record (easy way: use dropdown menus) |
au coleman (for author field) ti racial profiling (for title field) |
| Limit (filter) | restrict search results to a subset of the database | e.g., by language, year of publication, type of publication |
| Add to folder | select or save records from search results for future action | save specified records to display, print, email, or add to bibliographic manager (e.g., RefWorks) later |
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