How do I choose the best keywords for my searches?
Answer
Figuring out which words to put into a search box is an important first step to help you get relevant results. For starters, you will want to use search words that best describe your topic.
Think about your topic and make a list of key words that you can use for searching.
Example: If your research topic is "Do college students perform better academically if they get adequate sleep?" try searches like these:
college students and sleep
students and sleep and academics
sleep and students and performance
Notice that we avoided searching for common words like do, if, they, etc. because they will appear in so many books and articles that the results list would include irrelevant items.
As you explore the search results, make note of any additional words that are used to describe your topic. You may examine article abstracts and subject headings to find keywords that you may have missed.
As you find new keywords, integrate them into future searches.
Once you a list of possible keywords, start combining them with Boolean words to build some search statements like in the above examples.