Understanding Keywords
Search databases using keywords, concepts or subject phrases. Once you have identified your topic, selecting your keywords is pretty simple.
- Divide your topic into key concepts/segments/pieces.
In the question:
What is the relationship between advertisements and type II diabetes in teenagers?
The concepts are: advertisements, diabetes, and children
- Brainstorm for synonyms and related terms.
You will need to translate these terms to keywords later when you are searching databases for articles and sources. Even if a combination of words works well in one database, you may have to change keywords to find results in another database.
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Concepts
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teenagers
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diabetes
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advertisements
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Related terms
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young adults
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diabetes mellitus
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marketing
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adolescents
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diet
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commercials
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- Create your search by combining your keywords using and, or, not.
(Not tends to be too limiting so therefore is rarely used)
- And is used to narrow your search. Results returned will contain both sets of keywords.
- Or is used to expand your search. Results returned will return either keyword.
- Not will limit your search, and will exclude a keyword from the results.
You can also use parentheses to combine your search strings:
(teenagers and diabetes) and (advertisements or commercials)
- Follow the database-specific language.
As you do your searching, keep track of the words that appear in the detailed descriptions, or records, of your results list in the fields that will be labeled with headings such as subjects, descriptors, or subject headings. These synonyms and related terms are the specific vocabulary used to describe your search term in that database or discipline. Using these in your search can often improve your search results by making it more accurate and efficient/less time.
(In PubMed using the MeSH database is useful for identifying the controlled vocabulary used to index entries)
Tips and Tricks
Phrase Searching
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).
Ex: bridges AND history AND civil engineering (the black triangle in the middle of the Venn diagram below represents the result set for this search).
Note: Most search engines and databases will assume your search terms are connected with AND.
- OR broadens your results (because search results may contain either or both search terms).
Ex: university OR college OR higher education (the entire Venn diagram below represents the result set for this search).
Note: OR is especially useful if your search terms have synonyms.
- NOT excludes results with whichever search term follows it.
Ex: mercury NOT planet (the dark green section in the Venn diagram represents the result set for this search).
The order of your search terms matters when using NOT (results with the second search term will be excluded).
Truncation
- Truncation is represented by an asterisk (*)
- Enter the root of a search term and replace the ending with an *
Publication Cycles
Also consider the publication cycle of information. If you are seeking information on a very current or timely topic, then scholarly articles and books addressing the topic may not be available, but newspaper articles and popular articles may be reporting on the topic because they can be published much faster.
