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Step 2: Identify Search Terms. To identify your major search terms
think about your research question that you just entered and ask,
"what are the major keywords in my research question?"
For example, in the research question from the last video,
"what role does physical education play in an individual's overall well-being?"
the major keywords would be "physical education"
and "well-being." These major keywords
become the database search terms. Next,
since not all authors will use the specific keywords that you have chosen
when they write about the same or similar issues,
it is helpful to identify alternative terms
for each of your major keywords. To do this
think about the major keywords in your research question
and ask, "what are some related terms or concepts
that others might use when writing about these keywords?"
For example, for the major keyword "physical education"
I might also find articles relevant to this topic
if they talk about fitness, since fitness is an aspect
of physical education. For my other major keyword, "well-being"
I might also want to find articles that talk about health,
since health is similar to well-being. The alternative terms can be terms that
have the exact same meaning
or they can just be related in some way.
Now before using the search terms to search in a database,
we need to join them together in a logical way that tells the database
exactly what we are looking for. Use the word "AND" to join together your two major
keywords to tell the database that you want to find items with both
of those terms. Then use the word "OR"
to join each of the alternative terms to its major keyword.
This tells the database that you will accept articles
with either of those terms. Using
"AND" and "OR" in this way forms a search formula
that the database can understand. This search formula,
when plugged into a database well tell the database that we want articles that
have at least one of the words
physical education or fitness and also
at least one of the words well-being or health.
To help visualize this, imagine that the blue circle represents all of the
items in a database with the major keyword,
physical education and imagine that the red circle represents all the items in a
database
with the major keyword well-being. Searching the database for
physical education and well-being will only return the overlapping portions
that is in purple, that represents all of the items that contain
both of the keywords. Searching for physical education
or well-being will return all of the items contained in each of the circles,
because each item in both circles contains at least one of the key words
physical education or well-being. To expand our search,
but still keep it efficient, we can search for physical education in the
blue circle
and well-being in the red circle but we can use the term
"OR" to add optional terms to each circle.
Now the purple area represents all of the items in the database that contain
physical education or fitness and
well-being or health. Now it is your turn!
In the next series of questions you will identify at least two of the major
keywords
in your research question and then, think about least one additional related
term
for each keyword. The major keywords will be joined with your related terms
to create a search formula that you will use in the following steps
to search a database for relevant materials.
Click the next button to continue!