A search strategy is an organized combination of keywords, phrases, subject headings, and limiters used to search a database.
Your search strategy will include:
Your search strategy may include:
A search strategy usually requires several iterations. You will need to test the strategy along the way to ensure that you are finding relevant articles. It's also a good idea to review your search strategy with a librarian. They may have ideas about terms or concepts you may have missed.
Additionally, each database you search is developed differently. You will need to adjust your strategy for each database your search.
Boolean operators let you combine search terms in specific ways to broaden or narrow your results. Most databases use the operators AND, OR, and NOT.
Most databases allow you to specify that adjacent words be searched as phrases. Using quotation marks around search words is a common way to do phrase searching. By using quotation marks, you are telling the database to only bring back results with the words you typed in exactly the order you typed them. Use phrase searching to keep words together in a search so the database will search the phrase and not the individual words.
Example: "breast cancer" will yield results that contain the exact phrase breast cancer. Without the quotation marks, you will get results that include these terms separately (the database would search breast AND cancer).
Truncation:
Using truncation broadens your search to include various word endings and spellings. Many databases use an asterisk *
To use truncation, enter the root of a word and put the truncation symbol at the end. The database will return results that include any ending of that root word.
Example: therap* retrieves:
therapy, therapies, therapeutic, therapist, therapists
Wildcard:
Wildcards are used to replace a single character, either inside or at the end of the word; In most databases, this symbol cannot be used at the beginning of a word. Most databases use a ?
Example: t?re retrieves: tire, tore, tyre, etc.
Note: Wildcard options sometimes cannot be used inside a phrase search depending on the database (e.g. "child* therapy" is not an acceptable search, but child* AND therapy is).
Near Operator (N):
Using a near operator finds the words if they are within a specified number of words apart from one another, regardless of the order in which they appear.
Within Operator (W):
Using a within operator finds the words if they are within a specified number of words apart from one another, but follows the order the words are typed.
Example: (therapy W3 sleep) would find the phrase “therapy for improved sleep,” but it would not find “sleep therapy”
TIP: You don't have to do proximity searching, but it can save you a lot of typing and create cleaner searches that are easier to read.
Once you have a list of keywords and subject terms, you then combine them using Boolean and other search operators.
Topic: How does burnout and emotional exhaustion effect mental health care workers, and their effectiveness with treating clients?
Possible search terms combining Boolean Search strategies:
(therapist OR counselor OR clinician) AND (burnout OR emotional exhaustion) AND effectiveness
