It is recommended that you work with a librarian to help you design comprehensive search strategies across a variety of databases. Writing a successful search strategy takes intimate knowledge of bibliographic databases.
Boolean Logic
Using Boolean logic is an important component of writing a search strategy:
- "AND" narrows the search, e.g. children AND exercise
- "OR" broadens the search, e.g. (children OR adolescents) AND (exercise OR diet)
- "NOT" excludes terms, e.g. exercise NOT diet
Truncation
A database feature called "truncation" helps you find word plurals and different word endings, e.g. pain* finds pain or pains, reduc* find reduce, reduction or reducing.
Other useful tips
- Alternative spelling (pediatric or paediatric)
- Local usage (operating room or theatre)
- Brand or generic names (Panado or paracetamol)
- Abbreviations (TB or tuberculosis)
Review your initial search results
- Don't expect your search to be perfect the first time you run it.
- Do your search results look as if they can answer your research question? If not, you will need to revise your search strategy.
- Have you identified all the relevant databases to search?
