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Integrated sessions: Use search techniques - health

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"If in doubt, check the help area of each database you use. It will outline all of the relevant symbols for advanced search techniques"

Fiona Ware, Library Skills Adviser

Now that you have identified the key search terms and how they can be combined, you need to consider some additional search techniques that can improve the relevancy and number of your results.

These will take into account things like different spellings, plural words, similar and related words, different words for the same concept etc. You do not want to miss a key paper because the author used “advanced nurse practitioner” and you had only searched for “advanced practice”! The main techniques to help with this are explained in the list below – just click on any one to see an explanation of how to use it.

Truncation

Truncation

Use truncation to ensure all relevant articles are retrieved. This is often denoted by an asterisk * which is placed at the stem of the word. Truncating a term will look for variant endings and plurals.

Example 1: teen* would include results for: teen, teens, teenager, teenagers
Example 2: nurs* would include results for: nurse, nurses, nursing
Example 3: manag* would include results for: manage, manages, management, manager, managers, managerial

Phrase searching

Phrase searching

Enclose your search terms within double quotation marks, i.e “high blood pressure”. This will avoid databases automatically inserting an “AND” between your search terms.

Example: If you enter high blood pressure teenagers it will include all the search terms (i.e. high AND blood AND pressure AND teenagers) but the terms will not necessarily appear together. Using double quotation marks around "high blood pressure" will ensure only these three words in this specific order are included in results.

Wildcards

Wildcards

Use wildcards to improve your search. Different databases use different symbols. For example, on the EBSCOhost database, ? replaces one character, # replaces one or more.

Example 1: On an EBSCOhost * database, behavio#r, would find both behavior and behaviour.
Example 2: On an EBSCOhost * database, wom?n, would find both women and woman.
*Each database may have slightly different operators so check the help file for whatever database you're using

Proximity

Proximity

Narrow and focus your search, e.g. proximity searching. You can use operators such as 'N' to look for where words are NEAR to another. In some databases you can specify the distances between search words, for example in the EBSCOhost databases (such as Medline and Cinahl).

Example 1: "high blood pressure" N3 teenagers will find results with "high blood pressure within 3 words of teenagers, in any order.

Examples

Examples

See the following examples of the use of truncation, wildcards, phrase searches and proximity. These examples build on the previous pages. 

Example 1: teenagers and high blood pressure

 (teen* OR adolescen*  OR "young adult*" OR youth*  OR juvenile*) AND ("high blood pressure" OR hypertension) 

Example 2: dementia and the elderly

(dementia* OR alzheimer*) AND (elder* OR old* OR geriatric* OR senior*)

Example 3: leadership and organisations

(leader* OR manag* ) N3 (organi?ation*)