First, organize your research topic into concepts. Concepts are typically nouns or noun phrases.
- For example, if you are researching behavioral therapy methods used with teenagers with ADHD, your concepts would be
- behavior therapy
- teenagers
- ADHD
Using a databases's Advanced Search, enter each concept and its synonyms into a separate search line.
- "behavior therapy"
- teen* OR adolescen*
- ADHD OR "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder"
Use quotation marks around phrases, these are typically noun phrases that you would find a definition of in a dictionary.
- "clinical psychologists"
- "extracurricular activities"
Use * for truncation.
- teen* will find teen, teens, teenager, teenagers, teenaged
Limit to peer-reviewed articles if necessary.
Limit by date if necessary.
Too many or too few results?
- Use the thesaurus or Subject Index to find related, broader, narrower, and similar terms OR specific terms that the databases uses to describe a topic.
- Too many results? Use a narrower term.
- Too few results? Use a broader term.
Find an article that looks interesting?
- Click on the article's title.
- Look at the subjects given to an article to find related terms and run additional searches using these terms.
- Click on the references, cited by, or see similar documents links to find related articles.
