Search Strategy for Researchers: Frame your search strategy

Start developing a search strategy by identifying the key words and concepts within your research question. 

For example: What strategies can healthcare workers use to communicate effectively with clients with a hearing disability?

Treat each component as a separate concept (there are usually between 2-4 concepts).

For each concept list the key words derived from your research question, as well as any other relevant terms or synonyms that you have found in your preliminary searches. Also consider singular and plural forms of words, variant spellings, acronyms and relevant index terms (subject headings).

While the term strategies has been identified as a concept in this example, there are likely to be relevant articles that do not include terms such as strategies. As such, this concept would not be included in the final search strategy.
 

The above search strategy in a nested format (for use in a single search box) would look like:

("healthcare worker*" OR "health care worker*" OR "healthcare professional*" OR "health professional*" OR "health personnel") AND (communicat* OR "interpersonal communication" OR "communication skill*") AND ("hearing disabilit*" OR "hearing impair*" OR deaf* OR "hard of hearing" OR "hearing loss")
 

OR  

• Link keywords related to a single concept with OR
• Linking with OR broadens a search (increases the number of results) by searching for any of the alternative keywords

Example: hearing impaired OR deaf

AND

• Link different concepts with AND
• Linking with AND narrows a search (reduces the number of results) by retrieving only those records that include all of your specified keywords

Example: hearing impaired AND communication

NOT  

• using NOT narrows a search by excluding certain search terms
• Most searches do not require the use of the NOT operator

Example: hearing impaired NOT deaf will retrieve all results that include the words hearing impaired but don’t contain the word deaf.

Image courtesy Texas library

Truncation - The truncation symbol is commonly an asterisk * and is added at the end of a word.

• The asterisk applied to the root of a word captures other endings to that root word making it useful for retrieving singular, plural and other variations of a keyword.

Example:  strateg* will retrieve strategy, strategies, strategic, strategize etc

Note: If you don't want to retrieve all possible variations, an easy alternative is to utilise the OR operator instead e.g. strategy OR strategies.

Wildcard  - Wildcard symbols include the question mark ? and hash #. They replace zero, one or more characters in the middle of a word.

Example:  wom#n finds woman or women, p?ediatric finds pediatric or paediatric.

The symbols may vary in different databases - See the Database operators guide on the left for details or check the Help link in any database.

Wildcard searches allow the database to replace the wildcard symbol with any letters that would make up a real word. It's like a shorthand way of typing every possible word that fits the pattern with OR in between.