Introduction to Health Sciences Research

Choose keywords carefully

• Choose words specific to your topic
• Only use 2 or 3 main concepts
• Use AND to combine different concepts

Include synonyms

• Broaden your search
• Include medical and popular terminology
• Use OR to combine synonyms for the same concept

Filter your results

• Publication date - for example only items published in the past 5 years
• Resource type - for example only journal articles

Keep trying

• Add/remove search terms to limit/expand your search
• Try different databases
• Research often takes longer than expected

AND finds records with all of your terms/keywords and narrows your search.

OR finds records with any of the terms and broadens your search.

Truncation finds records with a term's various endings. For example, nurs* = nurse, nurses, nursing, nursed, etc.

Quotation marks search for a phrase instead of individual words. For example, "social media".