One of the most useful techniques to start with is to identify the main concepts and keywords of your topic.

Consider this topic for a 10-page research paper:

What is the relationship between bullying and suicide among teenagers?

If you type this topic into a database search box in this exact way, there is a chance that you will come up with nothing. That is because you would be searching via natural language, and for the most part, natural language searches are not successful in databases. Databases search for strings of characters; they do not necessarily interpret what you mean. Most databases will try to find records with these words in this exact order but will often not retrieve useful results. Even if you do luck out and get a few results, are they all the results? The best results? Probably not.

Let's try this search in the PsycInfo* database: S1 What is the relationship between bullying and suicide among teenagers?   View Results(0)

* We selected the PsycINFO database because our topic is
psychology-related and we need scholarly sources.

Other search issues to keep in mind:

Articles (a, an, the) and prepositions (in, to, for, etc) are rarely used as search terms. Rather, they are considered stop words and ignored by the computer, primarily because the results for searching common words would be overwhelming.

There are other types of words that are not always good to use in a search because there can be so many other ways to express them --

For example, "effect" can be "outcomes," "consequences," "results," "impact," etc.

Some words may already be implicit in a particular database -- for example, using the word "psychology" in a psychology database, or "education" in an education database may be unnecessary.

So, you need to be flexible. The best way to search is to break down your topic into searchable components and include useful synonyms:

bullying suicide teenagers harassment self harm teens cyberbullying   adolescents aggression   young adults

Suggestions for finding keywords and synonyms: Use dictionary.com -- both the dictionary and the thesaurus portion. Use a graphical dictionary such as: http://www.visuwords.com/ Just type a keyword in the search box, and Visuwords will provide synonyms, definitions, and associations with other words and concepts. You can then click on those other words to expand the "tree" or "neural network." Try it -- it's fun! In a database, you can use the thesaurus (more later). As you explore your topic, jot down the keywords used in your readings, whether it be an encyclopedia or a journal article.

Remember that you are searching for concepts: the terminology and words you use to describe those concepts can vary and may change as you search.