Resources for Information Skills

Section contents page Introduction Database searching What is an electronic database? Search strategies Planning your search Planning your search: key steps Boolean logic Advanced search techniques Reviewing your results Summary
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Advanced search techniques

It is important to check the help pages in individual databases for more detailed explanations on how to carry out advanced searching within that database. They are all different.

Phrase searching
  • Some databases automatically search words typed together as a phrase, others treat them as single words connected by AND. If your search term is two or more words you should search for it as a phrase - for example if your search term is heart disease, then you want to find articles that contain the term "heart disease" rather than just both of the terms heart and disease.
  • The most common way of searching for a phrase is to place it in quotation marks.
  • Example: "local government"; "heart disease"
Nesting or Parentheses ()
  • By using brackets around your words or phrases, you can specify in what order you want your search to be carried out. This works like mathematical equations. Without brackets the first instruction is automatically carried out first:

    4 x 5 - 2 = 18 but 4 x (5 - 2) = 12

    Therefore:

    Education AND Employment OR jobs but Education AND (employment OR jobs)

  • This can get quite complicated!! The most common use of parentheses is to group synomyms in order to widen the search, i.e. to search for something that may be known by different terms, e.g. child or children or youth seperately within the brackets, and then the rest of the search is added to this:
  • Example:

    "adverse effects" AND (child OR children OR youth OR adolescent) AND (television OR tv OR media)

Truncation
  • To truncate means "to shorten by cutting off a part". In searching, it means to shorted a word by cutting off the end, and replacing it with a symbol. Most search engines and databases use the symbol at the end of a word as a sign which means "find words with any combination of letters after the initial 'trunk', which means that you can use truncation to pick up different word endings and forms of words such as plurals.
  • The most common truncation symbol is the asterisk *, but some databases use other symbols (such as the plus sign +, or question mark ?. Check the help function of the database you are searching to find out what to use.

    Example:

    educat* will retrieve records which contain the words: education, educator, educate, educating, educational,educated etc. in a record.

  • Use truncation with care. Truncate too far up the word 'stem' and you can end up with articles of no relevance at all!

    Example:

    comp* will find computer,computing, computation BUT will also find compere,complete, competition,comparison

  • You can combine truncated terms with other words using Boolean Operators.

    Example:

    employment AND educat* will retrieve records which include the various forms of 'educat*' (as above) as well as the word employment.

Wildcards
  • Use a wildcard in the middle of words to replace either one or none letters. The most common symbol for a wildcard is a question mark ? but remember to check the help screens for the particular database you are searching.

    Example:

    wom?n retrieves woman, women; colo?r retrieves colour,color.