Welcome to the HLT505 Research Skills Guide.

This guide is to help with carrying out research in HLT505. It was made for you by a Librarian from the Library, in collaboration with the subject coordinator for HLT505.

Before you start searching online resources, it's good to have a grasp of some of the general principles on online searching.

Note: Databases and other online resources are similar in what they offer and what they do, but are different in their specific appearance and functionality. It's a good idea to check a database's Help section to check and confirm how to search in that particular database.

Search Operators (called Boolean Operators) allow you to combine search terms to broaden or narrow your search. You should always type these operators in capital letters.

• AND will combine the terms so that both or all terms must be in the results. This is a narrowing technique which makes your search more specific.
• OR will combine the terms to that one or other (or both or all) of the terms will be in the results. This is a broadening technique which gets more results.
• NOT will exclude results that contain a particular term. This is a narrowing technique. It's not used very often because it's probably better to search for what you do want rather than for what you don't want.

If you wish to use different combining operators in the same search, there are two ways that you can do this.

1. Use an Advanced Search screen with multiple boxes and use a different box for each part of the search:
2. 2. Use round brackets to enclose parts of the search where an operator is at work. The brackets ensure that the search tool interprets and executes the search exactly as you require. You must do this if you are using a single search box.
   For example ... (dementia OR alzheimer*) AND communicat*

Truncation is used to search for the same term with different word-endings. This is another way of making your search broader, with more results.

The truncation symbol is usually the asterisk (*).

Examples:

A proximity search forces a database to find results where one search term appears within a certain number of words of another search term.

The proximity operator varies according to the database. It is placed between the keywords/phrases in the same way as other combining operators. You can usually specify the number of words between the two terms. 

The examples below are from EBSCOhost but the databases vary. If you want to use proximity searching you should check the database's Help section.

In any EBSCOhost database:

Database records consist of fields that contain specific pieces of bibliographic information. Common fields include: Author(s); Article title; Journal title; Date/year of publication; Subject headings; Abstract (summary).

Most databases will default to searching in all the main fields, but changing this to search only in a specific field, or fields, can give you more precise results.

For topic searching, it's a good idea to search in the Subject field, but searching in the Title field can work quite well too. If you are searching for an author, you can search only in the Author field; if you are searching for a publication, you can search only in the Publication (also known as the Source) field.

To find the various fields in which you can search, look for drop-down boxes or menus.

The search process is an ongoing process of either narrowing or broadening your search (sometimes both), depending on your topic, your results, and how well they match up.

Narrowing techniques:

• searching in only one database, rather than more than one
• adding in extra search terms, and combining them with the AND operator
• searching in specific fields
• using limiters, either at the time you search, or after the search has been run
• combining search sets.

Broadening techniques:

• searching in more than one database
• adding in extra search terms, and combining them with the OR operator
• using truncation.

In most databases your searches will be saved and you can go back to them later, but note that, if you wish to save results and searches permanently, you will need to create a personal account or folder in the database or database platform that you are using.

What's the difference?

• A keyword search is where multiple words entered together in the search box are searched for separately as keywords. The search tool puts the AND operator between the terms. Here, if you want to search for the words as a phrase, you must enclose the words in double quotation marks.
• A phrase search is where multiple words entered together in the search box are searched for as a phrase. Here, if you want to search for the words separately, you must insert the AND operator between them.

It is useful to know whether the database you are searching defaults to a keyword search or a phrase search.

EXAMPLES - Keyword Search. Primo Search and most databases (eg EBSCOhost and ProQuest databases) default to a keyword search:

EXAMPLES - Phrase Search. Some databases (eg Ovid databases) default to a phrase search:

If in doubt, enclose a phrase in double quotation marks.