Plan your Search

Before you begin looking for resources for your assignment or research, focus on planning your search strategy. A small amount of time now will save you time and frustration later.

Planning your search is key to getting the most out of your search results. 

Search Terms

Search terms can simply be what comes to your mind when you think of a research topic or they can be more precise disciplinary terms. For example, if you are conducting research on healthcare for the elderly, you might search just that, health care for the elderly, or you might search the disciplinary term, geriatric medicine. 

Determining your search terms is part of the research process and is, as with using techniques like limiters and Boolean operators, experimental in nature. Beginning the searching process by using terms that come to mind will help you brainstorm new search terms while looking at subject headings in your search results can help you gain insight into disciplinary terminology. Searching your terms list in a variety of combinations and with a variety of other searching techniques is the next step.

• Identify the keywords/key concepts in your question or topic.These are the main ideas and the words which give meaning to the question (The keywords you choose twill effect your search results)
• Think about what other words (similar words or alternative terms) might be used to describe the key concepts
• Connect your concepts using AND and OR
• Remove task words (also known as instruction words) from your assignment question - these are the words telling you what to do with the key concepts (e.g. analyse, compare, discuss)
• Use filters for better results
• You can change your search as you find more information

Identify Main Concepts & Search Terms

Sample asignment question: - "Is it a provable fact that playing video games causes aggressive behaviour in teenagers?"