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ECPY 664: College Student Subcultures (Wallace): Building A Search Strategy

This guide is intended to serve as a resource for students completing the HAT for Professor Joshua Wallace's ECPY 664 College Student Subcultures

Searching Basics

The literature search is an iterative process. The initial search string (or combination of keywords, symbols, and operators are that entered into the search box within a database or engine) will change as you revise your research question, review your search results, and refine your keywords.

This page offers guidance to help you build an initial search strategy, which is often recommended before going to a database. As you search, you should keep a record of keywords and phrases - both the combinations that produced relevant results and those that did not. 

Visit the Research DIY page for more information the research process.

Generating Keywords

Step by Step Instructions

  1. Write out your research question. For example: "How does exercise affect the mental health of college students?"
  2. Pull out the most important words from your research question. exercise, mental health, and college students.
  3. Think of synonyms for these keywords.  Exercise: workout, fitness. College students: university students, post-secondary students.
  4. Think of broader keywords. Mental health: well-being. Broader keywords are helpful if you aren't getting enough results.
  5. Think of narrower keywords. Mental health: anxiety. Narrower keywords are helpful if you're getting too many results.
  6. Start searching a library database with your keywords. Remember to try out different keyword combinations to get the best search results.
  7. Collect additional keywords as you search.

Search Tips & Tricks

Boolean operators

  • And - narrows the search. Results must contain all of the specified terms. For example, a search for college AND university will retrieve the results that contain both search terms. 
  • Or - broadens results. Results must contain at least one of the specified terms. For example, a search for college OR university will retrieve all of the results that contain references to colleges, all of the results that contain references to universities, and all of the results that contain references to both colleges and universities.
  • Not - excludes terms from the search. Results do not contain the specified terms. For example, search for college NOT university will retrieve only the results that contain the term college and none that contain the term university. This means it also will also exclude results that reference both college and university. 

Quotation Marks

Using quotation marks in many databases will allow for the exact phrase to be searched. For example, a search for "college students" will tell the database to retrieve results where those two words are grouped together in that order, as opposed to results that reference college and students separately.

Truncation

Often, using an asterisk (*) after the root of a word will broaden the retrieved results to include various word endings and spellings. For example, searching educat* retrieves articles that reference educate, education, and educating.

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