2. Develop search strategy
Now that you have greater understanding of your topic. The next step is to identify the key concepts around your topic that you want to find information about. These concepts become keywords or search terms you can use in databases to find articles.
Alternative keywords
Researchers often use different words to describe the same concept. It’s helpful to think about alternative keywords that could be used in your search, so you don’t miss any academic articles relevant to your topic. Alternative keywords might include acronyms, abbreviations, synonyms, etc.
For example, if you’re searching for academic articles only using the keyword ‘design factors’ . You may miss articles that use ‘design aspects’, 'design elements', or ‘architecture’.
Activity
Let’s brainstorm alternative keywords for the concepts in our example topic. These will become the search terms you’ll use later in the module. In the box below, enter alternative keywords for ‘energy efficient’ and ‘residential buildings’.
Here are some keywords we came up with.
- energy efficeincy: energy efficient, energy saving
- residential buildings: residentials, housing, suburban
Search techniques
Once you’ve chosen your keywords, join them together using search techniques to create a search strategy.
Watch the video (3:05) below for an introduction to common search techniques.
Combining search techniques
Using synonyms, truncation, phrase searching, and Boolean operators are useful search techniques when searching in a database.
Click the plus (+) icons below to reveal searching techniques used to look for information about Glenn Murcutt, nature and architecture.
Activity overview
This interactive activity shows an image of the Library advanced search bars filled in with an example search as follows:
"Glenn Murcutt"
AND Nature OR Environment
AND Architect*
There are 3 selectable icons that explain each of the search techniques used in this advanced search.
Technique 1: Phrase searching
Phrase searching narrows a search to show results that contain an exact phrase, not just individual words.
To conduct a phrase search, add double quotation marks around two or more words you want to search for.
Technique 2: Boolean operators
Boolean searching is a type of search that allows users to combine keywords with operators to produce more relevant results
- Using the word AND between two search terms narrows a search to show results containing both terms.
- Using the word OR between two terms broadens a search to show results containing either term.
In this example Nature OR Environment will find results that contain either of those terms.
Technique 3: Truncation
Truncation searching broadens a search to show results that include alternative word endings. To conduct a truncation search, use an asterisk character *
In this example, the asterisk at the end of the word Architect* will search for all word endings - i.e. architect , architects, architecture, architectural
To learn more, watch the video What are boolean operators?
Create a search strategy
Activity: Building a search strategy
Let's build a search strategy using the keywords you came up with on the previous page. We've listed the search terms you entered below:
Here is a search strategy that we came up with:
(“design factor*” OR “design aspect*” OR design* OR architecture OR “design element*” ) AND ( “energy efficien*” OR “energy saving*” ) AND ( “residential building*” OR residential* OR hous* OR suburb*)
This is just one example. Searching involves trial and error, and you’ll need to do a few searches to find the best resources.
Remember! You can group your concepts together using brackets or if you are using an advanced search with multiple search boxes, you can group them within a search box like below:
“design factor*” OR “design aspect*” OR design* OR architecture OR “design element*”
AND
“energy efficien*” OR “energy saving*”
AND
“residential building*” OR residential* OR hous* OR suburb*
