Search Techniques

SEARCH TECHNIQUES
B.  Identify your search terms

The first step in conducting a literature search is to identify the main concepts of your topic.  For example, if your topic is: 

you can break this down into three concepts: 

NOTE: The concept "care" may be implicit in a Nursing database, so you might not have to include it in your search.  In a more general database, you would want to include it. 

Articles and prepositions are rarely used as search terms.  Rather, they are considered stop words and ignored by the computer. 

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, "effects" can be "results," "outcomes," "what happens," etc.  It may be helpful to further define your topic with synonyms or similar terms: 

These are the search terms or keywords that may be used in a search statement. 

Next: C. Constructing a search statement