ENGL 2A: Critical Thinking and Writing (Medina)

Select a Database (Visit SCU Databases to search all databases A-Z or use the Library resources tab to find databases) 

Break down your research question/ topic  into keywords, and select the most important concepts/ideas. 

• What methods of strength training are most effective in young adults?

• How does universal health care impact healthcare costs in Canada? 

Enter the keywords you identified in the search boxes

Identify synonyms to your keywords

young adults = young person, adolescents, juvenile, minor, teen

health care costs = medical cost, treatment cost, health costs, hospital bill, health expenditure

• Power Thesaurus

AND

AND is the most common

AND will narrow down your search so you get less results, because it is telling the database that your search results must include every one of your search terms.

When you use AND to combine your keywords, keep in mind that while you will get results that have all of your keywords together, they might not necessarily be next to one another.

Examples

students AND community college

concussions AND football

textbooks AND student success

Searching Using AND - EBSCO 

Phrase searching ( "            ") 

Using quotes around search words is a common way to do phrase searching

Example: "community college"  or "climate change" or "first-generation" "voter suppression" or "civil rights" 

OR

OR broadens your search. Remember that in database searching, OR means MORE results. OR tells the database that you want results that mention one or both of your search terms.

OR is a helpful operator to use if you have a search term that has multiple meanings, like preschool OR nursery school. You will notice when you do your searching, that some authors might use the term "preschool" and others will use "nursery school" to mean the exact same thing. OR helps you make sure that you find the most possible articles about your topic. 

Examples

traumatic brain injury OR TBI

Artificial Intelligence OR AI

Salem Witch Trials OR Salem Witchcraft Trials

Searching Using OR - EBSCO

NOT

 NOT helps narrow your search by excluding certain terms from your search. When using NOT, you are telling the database that you want information that is related to the first term, but not the second.

NOT is useful if one of your keywords has multiple meanings that keep giving you irrelevant results.

Examples

Hedy Lamarr NOT Hollywood

presidential elections NOT United States

dinosaurs NOT extinction

Searching Using NOT - EBSCO

Truncation is a technique that broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings. To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end.

Examples:

Studen* = student, students 
Latin* = Latin, Latino, Latinos, Latinx
America* =  America, American, Americans