Writing a Search Strategy
It is recommended that you work with a librarian to help you design comprehensive search strategies across a variety of databases. Writing a successful search strategy takes an intimate knowledge of bibliographic databases.
Using Boolean logic is an important component of writing a search strategy:
- "AND" narrows the search, e.g. children AND exercise
- "OR" broadens the search, e.g. (children OR adolescents) AND (exercise OR diet)
- "NOT" excludes terms, e.g. exercise NOT diet
- "*" at the root of a word finds all forms of that word, e.g. (child* OR adolescen*) AND (exercise* OR diet*)
- parentheses ensure all terms will be searched together as a set
- quotations around a phrase searches that exact phrase, e.g. (child* OR adolescen* OR "young adult*")
