The guides listed below walk through the different aspects of the research process.
You may have seen the terms AND, OR, and NOT while searching in a database. These terms are called Boolean Operators, and they are used to define the relationship(s) between your search terms.
Below is an example of the search function in the database Academic Search Premier, which includes drop-down menus for Boolean searching.
AND combines search terms. For instance, if someone wanted to research how sled dogs are trained, they could link the term training with sled dog using AND. This search will retrieve only the results that have both terms, thereby narrowing the search.
OR expands your search by retrieving items relevant to either or both terms in your search. This can be especially helpful when there are multiple common ways to express the same term or concept, including acronyms (e.g. AI vs. artificial intelligence). In this example, searching college athletes OR student athletes will retrieve results that contain either or both search terms, ultimately broadening the search.
NOT narrows your search by excluding results that mention the specified search term. For example, if you are interested in dolphin populations around Miami but notice that most of your search results are irrelevant and related instead to the football team the Miami Dolphins, you can prevent irrelevant results related to football from showing up in your search.
Nesting is a method for combining multiple searches with more than one Boolean Operator. Another way to think of nesting is grouping -- you're grouping similar concepts together. Let's work through how nesting impacts your search string.
If you're researching Generative AI and labor, you may initially try to structure your search like so:
This search retrieves results containing either (generative AI and labor) OR compensation rather than capturing how generative AI and labor and compensation are related. While relevant results may appear, you'll get a lot of results that have nothing to do with the main concept you're researching. In the example below, the second result looks good, but the first result has nothing to do with the concept you're interested. It shows up because the word 'compensation' appears.
For a more effective search, utilize nesting! You could set up your search like so:
There are fewer, but significantly more relevant results:
In this search, the database is retrieving results that discuss both (generative AI OR generative artificial intelligence OR genAI) AND (labor OR compensation OR wages). By combining synonymous concepts using nesting, you are searching multiple combinations at once more effectively than performing individual searches for the following combinations:
The examples above are using an advanced search which means there are multiple search boxes. To construct the same search in a single, or basic, search box, you would build your search using parentheses. Using the same example topic, your search could look like this in a basic search box:
Use a wildcard, usually depicted as a question mark (?) but may vary by database, to represent a single character in a word. This may be especially useful when searching for a term with variable spellings such as color and colour. In the example below, wom?n will retrieve results for both women, woman, and womyn. You can use wildcards in combination with keywords and other advanced search strategies. The search example below also retrieves activism in relation to wom?n.
Use an asterisk (*) to replace several characters at the end of a word. This is most useful at the end of a root word such as educat* which would retrieve results containing educate, educated, education, educational, or educator and greatly expands the number of results. It's important to use a specific root word with a unifying concept so you don't get irrelevant results. For example, if you do a truncation search for inter* your results will include intercollegiate, interdisciplinary, interdependent, intersectional, interview, etc. In the example below, feminis* will retrieve results containing feminist, feminists, feminism, etc. You can use truncation in combination with keywords and other advanced search strategies. The search example below also retrieves activism in relation to feminis*.
Place quotation marks around a phrase to glue those words together in that specific order. For example, the search below is telling the database to search for "trauma informed care" with those words in that order. Without the quotation marks, the database would retrieve results containing the individual words trauma, informed, and care which would not capture the concept of trauma-informed care.
Phrase searching narrows your search and you might find that you aren't getting the results you anticipated; try searching without the quotation marks to broaden your search. If you're searching multiple concepts expressed through a phrase and use phrase searching, you also might limit your results too much. Play around and see what works!
As you're exploring your results and find a source that seems relevant, look for a list of subject terms on the page. These are terms chosen by indexers and/or librarians from a controlled vocabulary and applied to books, articles, etc. based on their content. The terms assigned to an item tell you broadly what it is about. These are also typically hyperlinked so you can click on them to redo your search as a subject search which is narrower by retrieving items with that same assigned subject. In the example below, the subject terms show that this article is about arts and drama therapy as they relate to nature therapy. They're also hyperlinked so if you click on one, say nature therapy, your new results page will retrieve articles that are about nature therapy. Subject terms are another place to look for relevant keywords that you can try.
