Research: B2+. Anneli Williams

name of a database, not the name of the journal or article that you are looking for.

      

If you do not know the name of a database, search for one by subject.

      

If you get poor results with one database, try searching for articles using a different database within your subject area.

       Advanced keyword searches

      Searching for items in a database requires a lot of skill and practice. There are several ways in which you can make keyword searches more efficient.

       Searching for phrases

      For most databases, if you wish to search for a phrase, rather than individual key words, you can place quotation marks (“…”) around the phrase. For example if you are looking for articles for the essay question: Examine the impact of management style on teamwork in organizations, you can type “management style” in the search box. The database will list all of the articles containing that phrase. If you type the words in without quotation marks, the database will list all of the articles that contain the words management and style in separate places. You may end up with a list containing many irrelevant articles, for example articles about style in fashion or architecture.

      

Exercise 7

      Look at essay questions 1–4. Put quotation marks around the phrases you would use in a key word search.

      1 Critically evaluate media coverage of the 2008 banking crisis.

      2 Relate the principal factors that are commonly thought to influence a person’s choice of life partner to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

      3 Compare and contrast electricity generation from wind power versus electricity generation from hydropower in terms of efficiency, value for money and environmental impact.

      4 How does online social networking affect the way adolescents form friendships?

       Truncation

      Another technique that you can use to search more efficiently is to truncate key words so that articles containing words in the same word family are also listed in your search result. For example, if you are looking for articles about banking crises, you can truncate the word banking by typing a * after the root bank: bank*. This will ensure that articles containing the words bank, banks, bank’s and banking will appear in your search results.

       Glossary

      truncate To truncate something is to shorten it.

      

Exercise 8

      Truncate one word in each of the phrases 1–3. What additional words would be included in the search?

      1 environmental impact

      2 online social networking

      3 form friendships

       Boolean operators

      A third way of making your search more efficient is to use ‘Boolean operators’. This involves combining your key words using ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’ to make your search either more specific or more general. For example, if you want only articles that discuss both children and adolescents, enter ‘children and adolescents’. The more words you join with ‘and’, the smaller the number of results. Entering ‘children and adolescents and friendship’ will only get you articles that discuss both children and adolescents in relation to friendship.

      If you want to widen your search results, use ‘or’. For example if you want all of the articles that discuss only children as well as all of the articles that discuss only adolescents, you should search for ‘children or adolescents’. ‘Or’ is also useful for entering synonyms into your search. If the topic you are interested in is commonly referred to in a number of ways, you should use ‘or’ to capture as many relevant articles as possible. Some authors, for example, may use the word teenager instead of adolescent. In this case, you should search for ‘adolescents or teenagers’. The more words you join with ‘or’ the larger the number of results.

      It is common to combine ‘or’ and ‘and’ operators. For example, if you are interested in how adolescents form friendships, you might search for: ‘adolescents or teenagers and friendship’. Note: for some databases, you need to put terms you want to connect by ‘or’ in brackets, for example: ‘(adolescents or teenagers) and friendship’.

      Using the operator ‘not’ narrows your search by excluding any article with the word or phrase which follows ‘not’. This is useful when one of your key words has multiple meanings. For example the word capital can mean a sum of money or it can refer to a city where government is based. If you are only interested in the first meaning, you can enter ‘capital not city’. This makes it more likely that your results will only include articles relating to finance.

      Search screens vary in format, so in some cases you may need to type in the operators yourself, in others you may select them from a drop down menu. Spend some time practising using different databases or search engines.

       Tips

      Use Boolean operators to refine your key word searches.

      

Use ‘and’ to combine key words and narrow your results.

      

Use ‘or’ to include synonyms for key words and widen your results.

      

Use ‘not’ to exclude irrelevant items.

      

Exercise 9

      Prepare to do a key word search of the essay question: Is generosity an innate human trait? by following steps 1–4 below.

      1Underline the key words.

      2Write a synonym for generosity.

      3Decide where to use quotation marks to indicate a phrase.

      4Write your search terms using the Boolean operators ‘or’ and ‘and’.

       Making the most of the library

      As more and more information becomes available online, you may be tempted to do all of your research by computer and avoid your university library altogether. However, if you do this, you will miss out on a very useful resource. In addition to print and electronic copies of books and academic journals, your library is likely to have:

      

specialist librarians who can give you advice on resources in your subject area