Brainstorming search terms can help you modify your search strategy and paper topic. Here are the steps:
1. Write down your topic and identify the key (or most important) terms.
Example: How can cognitive behavioral therapy help adolescents with anxiety disorders?
2. For each term, write down synonyms, related ideas, broader terms, and narrower terms. For example:
Cognitive behavioral therapy > CBT, psychotherapy, behavioral therapy
Adolescents > youth, teenagers, young adults, high school students
Anxiety disorders > social anxiety, mental illness, situational anxiety
3. Try out different combinations of the key terms, adjusting as needed. If you have too many search results, try using more specific terms ("social anxiety" instead of "anxiety disorders"). If you have too few results, use broader search terms, or try searching for some of the related terms that you identified above.
Boolean operators are words (or, and, not) used to connect search terms to expand or narrow a search within a database to locate relevant information.
It is helpful to diagram the effects of these operators:
|
women or females |
Or retrieves records that contain anyof the search terms. It expands the search. Therefore, use "or" in between terms that have the same meaning (synonyms) or equal value to the search. |
|
women and media |
And retrieves records that contain all of the search terms. It narrows or limits the search. Therefore, use "and" in between terms that are required to make the search specific. |
|
image not weight |
Not eliminates records that contain a search term. It narrows or limits the search. Therefore, use "not" in front of a term to ensure that the search will not include that term. Warning: Some databases use "and not" instead of "not." Check the database help screen. |
Scholarly/academic/peer-reviewed sources are sources written by experts and are reviewed by experts in the field before the article is published.
You may consider scholars with subject expertise have authority in the area of your research topic and thus produce only good sources. However, like all types of sources and authorities, scholarly sources vary a lot by date, scope, method, and etc, making only some of them appropriate to cite in your research. Scholarly sources may have totally valid evidence but not so relevant to your research.
Finding a good scholarly source to use can sometimes be a messy process, but below are some questions you can ask yourself in order to determine if the academic article is worth using in your research.
More information about factors to consider when evaluating scholarly articles
