Post Graduate Studies- MSc Nursing: Research Skills

Improving your search results using phrase searching, truncation and wild cards.

Truncating a term will look for all words which start with the root word you have entered. Truncation is particularly good for variant endings and plurals.

Examples as below:

teen* will find teen, teens, teenager, teenagers

educat* will retrieve words: educate, educators, education, educates …

You can  use wildcards to improve your search for words with variant spellings. Different databases use different symbols so make sure you check the Help pages on each resource. On the Ebsco datababases the ? is used to replace one character and the # to replace 1 or more.

See examples below.

Colo#r will find color as well as colour

Behavio#r will find behavior as well as behavior

Wom?n will find woman or women                                

Many databases (including the library catalogue) automatically insert an AND in between your search terms, so if you enter Nurses Job Satisfaction it will look for articles which include the terms Nurses AND Job AND Satisfaction. To ensure only the phrase 'Job Satisfaction' is searched, you can enclose this within double quotation marks, i.e. "job satisfaction".

Using phrase searching will help narrow your search and make it more specific.

Before you start searching for information in electronic databases, it's always worth spending some time thinking about your search terms. This planning process is known as framing your search strategy.

Brainstorm a Topic that Interests You:

Identify keywords & main concepts

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List synonyms for each concept

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Find broader terms for each concept

• Select a topic

• Search the literature

• Develop the argument

• Survey the literature

• Critique the literature

• Write the review