Communication

It's best to start by brainstorming some Keywords for your research topic. Keywords are typically nouns or noun phrases.

• Example: when researching the influence of social media on teenagers's communication with their peers, some keywords would be
  • social media
  • teenagers
  • communication with peers

You can combine keywords with boolean operators to broaden or limit your search.

AND: search for both keywords

• Ex. social media AND teenagers

OR: search for either keyword

• Ex. peer communication OR interpersonal communication OR social communication

NOT: exclude a keyword

• Ex. teenager NOT adult

IMPORTANT! Use all caps for the operator when searching!

Quotation marks around phrases will return results with only that exact phrase in it.

• "social media"
• "peer communication"
• "young adult"

Use * for truncation.

• teen* will find teen, teens, teenager, teenagers, teenaged

You can use filters to limit to peer-reviewed articles or to a specific subject or date range.

Using an Advanced Search, you can enter each keyword and its synonyms into a separate search line.

• "social media" OR Facebook OR instagram OR pinterest OR reddit OR snapchat OR twitter
• teen* OR adolescen*
• "peer communication" OR "interpersonal communication"

Found a relevant article?

• Check out its subject tags to find related terms and use those to run additional searches.
• Click on the references, cited by, or see similar documents links to find related articles.

Handbooks and encyclopedias can help you develop a topic or search strategy.