How to do Research - Indianapolis

Keywords are the words and phrases entered into search boxes. The words you use and the way that those words are connected affect the search results.

Although you should not type your entire research question into a search box, your research question does help you identify the keywords to consider searching. It may also be helpful to consider synonyms or other words that are closely connected to the keywords in a research question.

Example:

• Research Question: How is the mental health of teenagers impacted by frequent social media usage?
  • Possible keywords to search:
    • mental health, mental health disorders, anxiety, depression, suicide
    • teenagers, adolescents, young adults, students, k-12, college
    • social media, Instagram, TikTok, FaceBook, smartphone apps

Use quotation marks around a group of keywords to find results with that exact phrase. This tells the database to search for the exact phrase in the order they appear, instead of searching for the keywords separately. For research, quotation marks convert a phrase into a single keyword that the database searches for.

Example: 

• "social media"
  • Will only show results that mention social media (as a singular concept). This keeps results focused. 
• social media
  • Will show results that contain the word "social" and "media," regardless of whether the words are next to each other in the article. This could result in sources about the social practices of animals or other types of media. 

Boolean connectors are used to help you narrow your search results quickly and efficiently. The connectors tell the database exactly what relationship between your keywords you are searching for, which impacts your search results accordingly: 

• AND - narrows your search by making sure that all of the keywords will be present in the sources found. 
  • Example:  smartphones  AND  teenagers 
    • Will only show results that mention both keywords
• OR - broadens your search by making sure that any one of the keywords will be present in the sources found.
  • Example:  teenagers  OR  teens  OR  adolescents
    • Will show results that mention any of these synonyms
• NOT - limits your search by making sure that any source that includes the keyword will not be found.
  • Example:  smartphones  NOT  "social media"
    • Will show results about smartphones, but not social media usage

Nesting is used when you are trying obtain more comprehensive search results by linking two or more concepts that may have many synonyms or may be represented by a number of different keywords.

Use parenthesis around the collection of possible keywords (grouped by the Boolean connector OR) to search that group first, before connecting any additional keywords. 

Example:

• ("social media"  OR  Instagram  OR  TikTok  OR  Facebook)  AND  "mental health"
  • will find results about any iteration of the social media terms included within the parentheses that also mention mental health

Using a truncation symbol can locate words with a variety of endings, including plurals, without needing to list out those variations as separate keywords to search. Many Ivy Tech databases use the asterisk (*) as the truncation symbol, but IvyCat uses a question mark (?).

Examples:

• In the EBSCOhost database, climat* will find results for: climate, climates, climatic, etc.
• In the IvyCat catalog, immigra? will find results for: immigrant, immigrants, immigration, immigrated, etc.  

You can combine keywords, phrases, Boolean connectors, nesting, and truncation into one search to form a search string. 

Example:

• ("social media"  OR  Instagram  OR  TikTok  OR  Facebook)  AND  "mental health"  AND  (teenagers  OR  teens  OR  adolescents)
  • Will find results that mention the various social media terms, connected to the mental health of teenagers