Planning your search

Defining a topic or strategy

Databases enable you to search for references on a given topic. Before you begin your search, you must first have a clear idea of what to search for.

• If your search strategy is too broad, it may result in an unreasonably large number of “hits” or irrelevant articles
• If your search strategy is too precise, you may not receive any “hits” or relevant articles at all

You need to plan before you start to ensure that you have selected the optimum search terms. The more refined and focussed your search terms are, the more effective and efficient your search will be.

Analysing your topic and identifying key search terms

The first step in planning your search strategy is to ensure that you understand the key concepts. A useful approach is to rewrite the question or topic in your own words. This will:

• help you clarify what is being asked of you
• help you define your search terms.

Once you have identified the key concepts in the topic, you need to make a list of synonyms, or alternative terms for each concept.

Now, look at your topic, and highlight the key concepts in the topic.

Synonyms or alternative terms

To broaden your search, you could also consider related words, plural or singular forms of terms, or alternative spellings e.g. GENDER – sex, sex differences; DEPRESSION – dysphoria, mood. Make sure that your search terms are as specific and distinctive as possible.

Hints & Tips - Two useful shortcuts for searching alternative word forms Truncation enables you to search for a variety of word endings, by using the symbol * (NB: different databases use different symbols. PsycINFO uses * e.g. DEPRESS* finds all the words beginning with this stem, including DEPRESSION, DEPRESSED, DEPRESSING etc. NOTE: sometimes truncation can make a search too broad, so use this cautiously. Wildcards enable you to target different spellings of a given word, by using the symbol ? or $ e.g. COLO?R finds both COLOUR and COLOR.

Keywords and thesauri

Databases often contain a dictionary or thesaurus of standard terms for you to use. These can help you to find appropriate subject headings for your topic.

For example, in PsycINFO, the Term Finder feature enables you to find subject headings that are used in the database. The advantage of this is that it helps you choose search terms which are recognised by the database, as well as providing related terms.

However, it may take time for new topics to appear on subject heading lists, so you should not confine your searches to these controlled vocabulary searches

3.1	Module 3 objectives
3.2	Databases: searching the literature electronically
3.3	Planning your search
3.4	Accessing databases
3.5	PsycINFO: Psychology database
3.6	Module 3 review
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