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HSC 210 and HSC 225: Strategies for Searching

Searching Strategies

Strategies for Searching

Stuck looking for information? Here you will find strategies and techniques to help with database searching. Experiment with these strategies and techniques across multiple databases. What doesn't work in one place might work in another.

Searching Strategies Overview

There are a number of different sources that be searched for literature, including:

  • Citation Databases - you should search across a range of databases, as no one database covers all the related literature. Your choices regarding which databases to search will depend on the topic of your paper. It is important that your searches in these databases is both comprehensive and reproducible. See Netter Library's Complete List.
  • Clinical Trials - many clinical trials remain unpublished. It is important to include unpublished and ongoing studies to minimize potential bias
    • Cochrane Library
    • Clinicaltrails.gov
  • Grey Literature  - information not controlled by commercial publishing that is produced by organizations, governments, and industry. Examples of grey literature include
    • ​conference papers
    • reports
    • theses
    • government publications
    • fact sheets
    • statistics
    • research in progress
    • Learn more about Grey Literature 

Adapted from RMIT University's Systematic Reviews in Health Research Guide.

Keywords 

  • natural language terms used to describe your topic
  • can be combined a number of ways
  • used when no appropriate subject heading exists
  • sometimes too broad or too narrow

When searching, keywords can be used to...

  • Search for singular and plural terms together
  • Search for terms with different spellings
  • Search for synonyms of terms together
  • Search for phrases inside of quotation marks

Subject Headings

  • also known as "controlled vocabulary"
  • used by an organization to describe the concepts in the literature collected by that organization
  • consistent in their definition across the records in the organization's database
  • less flexible than keywords -- need to know the exact term to use (some databases have 'entry terms' that will connect the subject heading to term you've entered)
  • a method to yield results very relevant to your topic

Databases that use subject headings

Boolean Operators

  • Use to COMBINE TOGETHER separate topics. 
  • Narrows your search
  • Finds results that include ALL of your terms

Examples:

  • Cat AND Dog
  • Exercise AND Heart Attacks
  • Use tto CONNECT SYNONYMS or related ideas
  • Broadens your search
  • Finds results that include ANY of your terms

Examples: 

  • (Cat OR Dog)
  • (Exercise OR Workout OR Aerobics)
  • Use to REMOVE TERMS from the search results
  • Narrows your search
  • Further defines your term -- good for terms that might have multiple meanings

Examples:

  • Cat NOT Dog
  • Nursing NOT breastfeeding 

 

Phrase Searching

  • Also known as quotation searching 
  • Uses quotes " " to search for an exact phrase
  • Useful when paired with OR
  • The quotations "lock" in your terms and tell the database to retrieve results that have your terms appear exactly as they do in the quotations

A search for attention deficit disorder = attention AND deficit AND disorder  -- without phrase searching

A search for "attention deficit disorder" = "attention deficit disorder" -- with phrase searching

Truncation

  • Uses a symbol to search for all possible forms of a word
    • Frequently used symbols include asterisk (*), a question mark (?), or a dollar sign ($)
  • Broadens your search
  • Useful to find alternate endings or plural form of a word
  • Different databases use different symbols. Check the database's 'Help' or 'Search tips' pages for details on which symbol to use

Example: Child* = child, child's, childhood, children, children's, 

Note: The placement of the truncation symbol can impact the type of results you get back.

Example: If I searched Hum* with the expectation of getting versions of 'Human', I'd also get.... 

  • Humans
  • Humanoid
  • Humorous
  • Humor
  • Hummus

Wildcards

  • Use symbols to represent a letter or letters in a word
  • Broadens your search
  • Useful when searching with words that have different spellings
  • Frequently used wildcard symbols include question marks (?), the pound symbol (#), or the astrisk (*)
  • Different databases use different symbols. Check the database's 'Help' or 'Search tips' pages for details on which symbol to use

Examples:

  • wom#n = woman or women
  • col?r = color or colour