Devise a search strategy

After you define your topic, it's time to create a flexible search strategy before you get online and start searching for the information you need. This step will save you searching time and help increase the chance that you will find relevant sources.

Use keywords from your define your topic answers to create a simple search strategy like the one below. Connect your primary keywords together with AND going across and synonyms for each primary keyword with OR going down.

Example research question:

Is the media biased in reporting information on presidential candidates?

Primary keywords:

media, bias, presidential candidates

Search Strategy:

media AND bias AND presidential candidates
OR
television AND viewpoint AND elections
OR
newspaper AND liberal AND politics

Now you can mix and match several keyword combinations for searching:

media and bias and presidential candidates
media and viewpoint and politics
media and bias and elections
media and liberal

Tips:

1. Use AND to connect your keywords so that the database finds all those keywords in any hits that it retrieves.

2. Use the "idea" of the OR to mix and match synonyms with primary keywords, or you can type it in between synonyms to search like this:

(television or newspaper) and bias and elections

3. Use symbols such as the * at the end of keywords to pick up alternate endings. For example, politic* finds politic, politics, political, etc. Most SAC article databases and the catalog use this symbol.

4. Keyword v. Subject searching - use them together to find relevant items!

Keyword searching doesn't necessarily find relevant items. That's because:

• Keyword searching = finds items that simply contain your keywords
  
• Subject searching = finds items that are organized under a specific topic

So start with a keyword search in an online source, find an item that fits your topic, and then look for subject headings in the description of that item. Items in the library catalog, netLibrary, and article databases will include these subject headings. Click on these subject headings to find items that are specifically about that topic or simply incorporate the subject headings into your keyword search strategy for more relevant results.

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