Search techniques

When you use different databases you want your search results to be as relevant as possible. Here you find some basic search techniques that are useful.

These techniques can vary somewhat in different databases, read the help text in a database before you begin searching if you want to make sure.

 

Boolean operators

Boolean operators indicate how the search terms you have chosen should be combined. The most useful Boolean operators are AND, OR and NOT. They are possible to use in most databases and can help you to limit, broaden, or define your search.

 

AND helps you narrow your search and leads to fewer hits. Use AND when you want two or more words or terms to be in the same source/reference.

Examples:

environment AND consumption

economic growth AND environmental sustainability

 

OR expands your search and leads to more hits. Use OR for example when your search terms have synonyms.

Examples:

labour laws OR employment laws

work OR profession OR occupation

European Union OR EU

Corporate social responsibility OR CSR

 

NOT helps you narrow your search and leads to fewer hits. Use NOT when you want to exclude certain words or terms. Though use NOT with caution as relevant items as well can be eliminated from the results retrieved.

Examples:

employ* NOT employer (leaves out any results with the word employer)

 

Phrase searching (quotation marks)

It can be useful to search for phrases. This limits the result and can make it easier to find relevant material. In most databases you can search for phrases by adding quotation marks around the phrase.  This will only give you hits where the words within the quotation marks stands together in that exact order.

Examples:

“corporate social responsibility”

“climate change”

“economic growth”

 

Truncation

In most databases and search engines you can expand your search by substituting letters in a word with a symbol. The most common is an asterisk (*). This may be useful if you want to broaden your search, or if you are not sure of the spelling used for a search term you want to use. Truncation can be used both in the beginning, within and at the end of a word.

Examples:

financ* will search for finance, financial, finances, financial management etc.

Countr* searches for country, countries etc.

*economics will search for microeconomis, macroeconomics etc.

wom*n will search for woman, women

 

More search tips

Use filters in the database

Most databases contain a lot of possibilities to narrow your search, for example you can often limit the search when it comes to publication dates, document type, peer review, language, geography etc.

 

Searching with subject terms

Many databases have subject terms that are used to describe the content of documents. What these are called vary between databases, but they can often be found under headings such as Keywords, Subjects, Subject terms, Descriptors, Thesaurus. Check which subject terms are used in the database you are accessing and use them in your searches.