Precision Searching - Include these considerations in your searches to get more relevant results.
- Subject words Brainstorm words about your topic. Consider this Google Search: What are the pros and cons of genetic cloning? Brainstorm some words and synonyms that are at the heart of the topic: benefit, advantages, pros, negative, disadvantage, harm, genetic cloning, human cloning, clone, genetics.
- Dates - publication dates, recency or up-to-dateness - What years of publication do you want, that is, how recently published, for example, the last five years?
- Kind of information - Need a definition, need a biography, need history, need peer-reviewed research, need a popular magazine article, need a video, need a good read, need an ebook?
- Project size and type - A short paper? A presentation? A thesis? A dissertation? A multimedia digital art project?
- Geographic limit or scope- United States only, California only, San Diego only, Global, Bangladesh, the rainforests, the ocean, the south pacific rim? How would you describe the "where" of your search?
- Specifically who? - Children, teens, adults, people living below the poverty line, construction workers, students, anyone? How would you describe the "who" of your search?
Some databases still respond to the Boolean operators of: AND, OR, NOT to retrieve results and to advanced searching symbols and commands (?,*,""). What follows is an overview of these to try in case natural language searching does not retrieve relevant results. Remember to look for searching help in any source you search to find out if there are specific rules you must follow. Still having trouble? Contact lsalem@mail.sdsu.edu for help.
Boolean operators of: AND, OR, NOT
- AND
- Tells the database to return results that include both the keywords.
- Usually used to link different aspects of your research question together to find both concepts in the set of returned results.
- Narrows your results.
- Ex. “climate change” and pollution finds all articles that have both terms, so only articles that have both “climate change” and pollution.
- OR
- Tells the database to return results that include either of the keywords.
- Usually used to link synonymous terms or concepts.
- Expands your results.
- Ex. “global warming” or “greenhouse effect” finds all articles with either term, so all articles with “global warming” and all articles with “greenhouse effect”.
- NOT
- Tells the database to return results that do not include a certain keyword.
- Usually used to get rid of results that contain certain element of research topic.
- Narrows your results
- Ex. “Mexico” Not “New Mexico”- this will find all results with Mexico but no results that include the term “New Mexico”
Other Advanced Search Techniques:
- Using Quotations
- Requires keywords to be searched as a phrase.
- Ex. Finds “Global warming” instead of the default AND between keywords: Global AND warming
- Using Parenthesis
- Parenthesis allow you to create more complex search strings.
- Especially useful when using OR operator in between similar concepts.
- Ex. (ethics or morality) and cloning- Searches for articles with either ethics or morality AND the keyword cloning.
- Using Truncation
- Truncation, also called stemming, is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings.
- To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end.
- Truncation symbols may vary by database; common symbols include: *, !, ?, or #
- Examples:
child* = child, childs, children, childrens, childhood
genetic* = genetic, genetics, genetically
Putting it All Together:
Example 1. Topic: You are writing a paper looking at the movement for human rights in China.
- Google Search: What is the current status of human rights in China?
- Keywords: human rights, civil rights, political rights, political freedom, social freedom, China, The People’s Republic of China.
- Potential Database Search: (“human right*” or “civil right*”) and Chin*
Example 2. You are writing a persuasive pro/con paper on the issue of corporate farming and animal rights.
- Google Search: What is a corporate farm and how are animal rights affected?
- Keywords: factory farm, corporate farm, animal rights, animal welfare
- Potential Database Search: (“animal right*” or “animal welfare”) and (“factory farm*” or “corporate farm*”).
