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PUBH: Program Planning 1: Getting Started

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Reminder!

If you do not already have one, be sure to set up your ILLIAD account for Inter Library Loan. Be sure to click on First Time Users if you do not already have an account! You only have to fill out this form once!

Keyword Searching

For effective searching, DO NOT use sentence structure, such as your thesis statement or research question. 

Instead, use a keyword or keyword phrase to search library resources (Catalog, Databases) and web search engines (Google and Google Scholar) and locate results matching that word/s in a specified part (title, abstract, full-text) of the item. Once you have identified your key search concepts, start brainstorming some related terms (synonyms) to your key concepts.

Use a general thesaurus, subject dictionaries and encyclopedias, your syllabus, professor's notes, and subject headings to help you formulate keywords. 

 

Diagram of Research Process for identifying search terms 

Use the worksheet provided to help guide you through developing keyword search concepts from your research question. 

Developing Effective Search Strategies Involves...

  • Identifyng the key search concepts

  • Identifying related terms to the key search concepts

  • Using standard search structures to broaden and narrow your search results

While there is not ONE right way to do a search, the strategies identified here will improve your results!

Using AND, OR, NOT to Narrow or Broaden your Search...

Boolean searching involves adding or subtracting terms to your search to either broaden or narrow your search. It uses three terms (AND, OR, NOT) to tell the search engine or database whether to include or eliminate certain terms.                                  

                                                                                                                                                                            

Using Quotation Marks to contain Phrases...

Quotation Marks can be used to identify Phrases.

By using quotations marks, you can tell the computer to only bring back pages with the terms you typed in the exact order you typed them.

"herd immunity"

Instead of 

herd AND immunity

"public health policy" 

Instead of 

public AND health AND policy

 

Using Truncation to search Various forms of a Word...

Truncation allows you to search various forms of a word by finding alternative endings. The characher (*) is placed at the end of the first few letters of a search term or at the end of its root.

Ethic* retrieves

Ethics

Ethical

Ethically

 

Vaccin* retrieves

Vaccine

Vaccines

Vaccination

Examples

Bitmoji Image with text Breaking it Down     Developing Your Search Query

By now you should have read through these tips on pulling and locating possible search terms. Remember, also, that your terms can come from your topic provided by your professor. 

But how do you actually use these Operators AND and OR?

Here is a simple example of how this actually works:

 Let's say you are doing research on the following topic:  Why is salty and sweet such a desired snack combination?

Now let's decide which keywords are the most important and provide at least two synonyms for each.

Salty:Salinity, Briny, Sodium    Sweet:Sugary, Saccharine     Desired:Wanted, Sought, Craved   

Now that I have my keywords from my research question and some synonyms, I can begin making sets of possible search queries.

Salty AND Sweet AND Desired

(Salty OR Salinity) AND (Sweet OR Sugary) AND (desired OR craved)

There are other combinations that may work for this research question, but hopefully, you get the picture. 

Remember, OR is going to expand your results. It is great for the following situations:

  • To retrieve all members of an entire class of items - be sure to include the name of the class!  Citrus OR Oranges OR Lemons OR Tangerines OR Grapefruit.
  • Search both the acronym or initialism and the full name:  HPLC OR high-performance liquid chromatography
  • Search both Common and Scientific Names: Poison Oak OR Toxicodendron diversilobum
  • Search similar concepts *like we did above!   Salty OR Salinity
  • And sometimes you can actually use acronyms to fully express your concept:  dehydration OR hydration,   fertility OR sterility

AND will narrow your results! 

Salty AND Sweet:  The database will pull items that only deal with both of these in the same source!