Refining and Revising Your Search with Fields
Search Techniques
When you input your search string, what results do you receive? The way you apply the following strategies can vary across databases (ex. OVID vs. EBSCO vs. ProQuest) but are incredibly useful in understanding when and how to use them. Even your Google searching skills could benefit from these techniques!
Instead of the default search, let’s try out the Advanced Search function in the database you’re browsing, and use some of the following techniques here to refine your search results.
Brackets
Brackets work similar to BEDMAS in Mathematics, such that databases will search for everything inside brackets before moving onto the next word. They are most useful around “OR” words (meaning your synonyms of your key terms) to help your database search more logically.[1]
An example of a search inquiry using brackets could be:
(“social determinants of health” OR “health equit*” OR “health inequit*” OR “health disparit*”)
AND
(“dental care” OR “oral care” OR “dental health” OR “oral health”)
By typing in the above, your query will first retrieve all the articles that contain the words social determinants of health, health equities, health inequities, or health disparities and then will sort through those articles to find ones about dental care, oral care, dental health and oral health.[2]
If you’re wondering about the quotations or the symbols alongside a shortened word, see why we did that further below.
Quotations
Adding quotations to your terms is an example of phrase searching, meaning that when you can search for an exact phrase or term as a unit instead of them being searched individually. This can be helpful if you are concerned about word order, or if your search phrase contains common words.[3]
An example of a search inquiry using quotation marks could be:
“Social Media”, to keep the phrase whole, otherwise your search will be interpreted separately as “social AND media” and which may bring up irrelevant results.
Truncation and Wildcards
What happens if you have a keyword that can have multiple endings you want to include?
Truncation is the act of shortening a term to retrieve every variation of the word you are interested in searching about. When you shorten your term, you would indicate using a symbol (such as an asterisk) to retrieve all endings that include the letters you put before the asterisk.[4][5]
An example of a search inquiry using truncation could be:
If you want to search for everything in the realm of “nursing”, your root word is Nurs, and you would add the *symbol at the end (Nurs*) to include terms like Nurse, Nurses, Nursing, etc., in your query.
Use caution with truncation! If you make your root word too short, you may truncate too many words that may not always be relevant to your needs.
An example of a search inquiry with too much truncation abilities:
If you want to research about students, you might not want to truncate as Stud*, as besides Student or Students, it can extend to a wide variety of endings like Study, Studies, Studied, Studying, Studio, Studios, Studious, Studded…and more!
See how just the Stud* truncation alone brought us over 160 million results on OMNI? That’s way too many to look at, and even if we narrow using filters or limitations, it may well be still much more than we can reasonably work with! That’s why search strategies are so important implement for effective and timely results.
What happens if it’s only a minor difference in your key words? You might only have variation in an unknown character within your term; how do you search for alternative spelling?
Wildcards can be a way to account for variation within a word. You would indicate using a symbol inside where the potential variation would take place.
Please note that depending on where you’re searching, your wildcard symbol might be:
- A question mark or ?
- A hashtag or #
- A dollar sign or $
So check out the Help or Tips section in your database to ensure you’re using the correct wildcard symbols!
An example of a search inquiry using a wildcard could be:
If you want to account for the variation between the American spelling of Pediatric versus the British spelling Paediatric, you can input P?ediatric in your search bar to retrieve both variants.
Filters and Limits
You may have some conditions or details on sources that you retrieve. Perhaps you want the latest research on a topic and only want results only a few years old or perhaps you’re interested in peer-reviewed articles.
In some places like OMNI, you can see before you query some options to limit or filter your results, such as the resource type (Books and eBooks, Articles, Journals, etc.,), the language its written in, and the time of publication (start and end dates if you want between a certain time period).
Sample Search String and Results
Let’s try to apply all these tips and tricks to a search query! Here we will be searching to learn more about a research topic related to women’s health, and we want to connect concepts of pain management/treatment, as well how discrimination in healthcare services may influence this area.
We have three fields that we can search for here:
- (pain OR “chronic pain” OR “pain management”)
- We put in brackets to capture all related terms to pain
- We put quotations marks around chronic pain and pain management to capture these word in their exact order or phrase
- (bias OR discrimination OR “discrimination in medical care” OR “sex discrimination in medicine”)
- We put in brackets to capture all related terms to bias and discrimination
- We put quotations marks around discrimination in medical care and sex discrimination in medicine to capture these word in their exact order or phrase
- (wom?n OR “wom?n’s health” OR “wom?n’s health services)
- We put in brackets to capture all terms related to women and women’s health
- We put in a question mark to indicate a wildcard for both the singular and plural version of woman/women
Let’s see what results we got back:
Wow, over twenty-thousand results! That’s way too many for us to handle. What are some ways we can limit that right now?
The above result screen has encased some helpful filters that can help narrow down your retrieved results. We want only the latest work, so let’s say we want information published in the last 5 years. We want peer-review journals and to stick with article primarily that are written in English.
Let’s see how many results we have now:
Now we have seven-thousand results instead of the twenty-thousand we started with, not too bad for a first attempt! To narrow this number down more, you can think more about the types of sources you want to use (e.g. do we want original research or review articles?), the availability of these sources (e.g. open access, digital vs. print, etc.), or apply more specific subject headings in the filter section. If you’re still struggling with a lot of results, you may have to go review or refine your search terms some more.
Searching can be a complex endeavour, and it can be frustrating when you don’t receive the results you are hoping to answer your research questions. That’s okay, it happens! It’s a skill that takes a LOT of practice, but once you try your hand out, you can become an efficient and skilled searcher.
If you still find you’re struggling in creating an effective search strategy for your research or work, contact us at Western Libraries!
Resources
- Western Libraries Research Guide: OMNI (Search Techniques)
- National University Library How-To Guides: Preparing to Search
- PubMed Central: Literature Search (Simple rules for confronting the unknown)
Media Attributions
- Omni Truncation Results for Stud*
- Women’s Health with Pain Management and Discrimination in Health Search String on OMNI
- Women with Pain Management and Bias in Healthcare Search Results
- Women with Pain Management and Bias in Healthcare Search Resultss with Filter
- Campbell, Heather. “Getting Relevant Results: Search Limits.” The Clever Researcher, November 2, 2010. https://beryliveylibrary.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/search-limits/. ↵
- Campbell, Heather. “Getting Relevant Results: Search Limits.” The Clever Researcher, November 2, 2010. https://beryliveylibrary.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/search-limits/. ↵
- Campbell, Heather. “Getting Relevant Results: Search Limits.” The Clever Researcher, November 2, 2010. https://beryliveylibrary.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/search-limits/. ↵
- Campbell, Heather. “Getting Relevant Results: Search Limits.” The Clever Researcher, November 2, 2010. https://beryliveylibrary.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/search-limits/. ↵
- Holmes, Katie. “Getting Relevant Results: Boolean Operators and Related Strategies.” The Clever Researcher, September 21, 2017. https://beryliveylibrary.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/getting-relevant-results-boolean-operators-and-related-strategies/. ↵
