Once you have formulated a good research question/topic, you will
need to pick out the words and phrases that are most important to your
search. This is called identifying the main concepts and is necessary
for searching databases. For example, let's say your research question is: Looking at the question word-by-word, let's see which words will actually be useful when you search for information: The useful words/concepts are in red. Notice the words chosen have
some integral meaning - and they each describe a specific part of our
question. We skipped words that were too common or generic (should, use, be, purposes, etc.)
Should the use of marijuana for medical purposes be legalized?
Should the use of marijuana for medical purposes be legalized?
A search statement is a combination of words or concepts that you will use to input into a database to retrieve appropriate articles. When creating a search statement, you should try to get one word to described each part of your question. For example, using the concepts in our research question above, a search statement may look like this:
marijuana AND medical AND legalized
Notice the word AND in the search statement above! It is absolutely necessary to have that when searching in library databases - you may not need it on the web, but you need it in article and book databases.
Think about your question and words creatively - how else can you express the same idea? Are there any other words that may be useful? For example:
marijuana = cannabis
medical = therapeutic
legalized = law
Once you haved identified additional words, you can also create additional search statements! Look:
cannabis AND medical AND law
marijuana AND therapeutic AND legal
cannabis and therapeutic and legalized
A good searcher uses ALL techniques available!
