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Sanford College of Education (SCOE): Search Strategy

Welcome to your library resources guide - your one stop shop for educational research materials.

Developing Effective Database Searches

Keyword Searching

  • Go to the Advanced Search Screen and follow the model below.
  • In the first search box, enter a keyword or phrase that represents your topic.
  • In the second search box, enter a keyword or phrase that represents your subtopic.

  • To narrow your topic, add additional search boxes to experiment with other key ideas.

Example:

  • Big idea student development
  • Focus on major subtopic teacher role
  • Narrow focus to issue or problem compassion or empathy


Search String:

DE "student development" AND ( teach* OR learn* ) AND ( compassion OR empathy OR kindness OR caring )

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Focus the Search

Add an additional search concept to make your search more specific. To focus on your own research questions, modify by:

Population characteristic gifted, second language learner, deaf and hard of hearing, cultural group, ethnicity, etc.
Population group boys, girls, males, females, children, adolescents, teens, teenagers, youth, etc.
Subject area science, mathematics, reading, etc.
Grade level preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, etc.

You might also consider using terms that reflect possible outcomes such as student attitudes, student motivation, achievement, or rubrics.

Use of peer-review will limit results to scholarly, evidence-based articles.  It will also eliminate all ERIC Documents (ED#s) from the results list.

Need a Research Study?

Try searching with research terms. Set the database to look for your terms in the Abstract or Summary. While this doesn't guarantee that every search result will be an original (aka primary) study, it will help. See Recognize Primary Research for more information on how to identify primary research.

Example:

  • Big idea emotional development
  • Focus on major subtopic family or parental impact
  • Narrow focus to research or study: action research

 

Search String:

emotional development AND ( family OR families OR parent* OR sibling* ) AND AB action research 

The Search Strategy Builder is a tool designed to help you create a search string using Boolean search operators. Input your search terms, click the button, and then copy and paste the results into a database search box (e.g., SmartSearch).

  Concept 1 and Concept 2 and Concept 3
Name your concepts here    
Search terms Search terms Search terms
List alternate terms for each concept.

These can be synonyms, or they can be specific examples of the concept.

Use single words, or "short phrases" in quotes

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The Search Strategy Builder was developed by the University of Arizona Libraries and is used under a Creative Commons License.

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