Let's start thinking about what terms you will use when searching for information. To do this:
- Identify the key concepts of your topic (watch the topic analysis video for assistance); and then
- Brainstorm as many synonyms and similar terms/phrases as you can.
This is a useful exercise because the language used to describe your topic may vary from source to source, and you don't want to miss out on a good source because it uses a different term to the one you are searching on.
Here's another example - let's suppose that your assessment is to discuss the following topic:
Implementation of a sugar tax on sugar sweetened beverages
You need to pull out the relevent concepts from one of the topics and create searchable keywords from them:
| Keyword |
Synonym / Similar term or phrase |
| "sugar tax" |
"sugary drink tax", "soda tax" "sweetened beverage tax" |
| implement* |
application, enact* |
| "sugar sweetened beverages" |
"energy drinks", "soft drink", "fruit juice drinks" |
You'll notice the use of the asterisk (*), and inverted commas (" ") in these terms - find out more information about using these search tools on our Search Strategies page.
