LibGuides: InfoSkills for Social and Behavioral Sciences: 2.7. Search technique overview ǀ Examples of effective searches

2.7. Search technique overview

Search technique	Explanation	Example
AND	Boolean operator combines all search terms	mother AND father
OR	Boolean operator finds either search term	salary OR wage
NOT	Excludes term to the right of the operator	pepsi NOT coke
Nesting	Indicates order of search; items in () are found first	(mouse OR rat) AND trap
Phrase searching	Searches for words in the order entered	"social media"
Truncation	Searches for the root word and various endings	teen*
Wildcard	Searches for a single character within / at the end of a word	wom?n
Field searching	Searching within a specific field of a record	Entering 'rowling' in the Author field to find documents written by the author Rowling
Limiters/filters	Narrowing a search (results) according to certain criteria	Using the 'Peer reviewed' filter to retrieve only peer reviewed documents

An effective database search combines carefully selected search terms with the appropriate use of the techniques outlined above.

Here are some examples:

TOPIC: Prevention of youth crime

prevent* AND ("youth crim*" OR "teen crim*" OR "juvenile delinquen*")

TOPIC: Mobile device use and sleep quality in adults

("mobile phone?" OR smartphone?) AND ("sleep quality" OR insomnia) AND (adult? OR grown-up?)

TOPIC: Online learning and academic performance in college students

("online learning" OR "e-learning") AND ("academic performance" OR grades) AND "college student?"