Build a search strategy
Discover easy techniques to make your search faster, smarter, and more effective. A few simple tweaks can help you find exactly what you’re looking for.
Turn your research question into a search strategy
Searching a database works best when you use keywords, not whole sentences. Here’s how to break down your research question and get the results you really want.
| Step | What to do | Example |
| 1. Examine your topic | What is your assignment asking? | Topic: Discuss the integration of maths into primary school classrooms. |
| 2. Identify key words | Pick out the main ideas. These will become your search terms. |
For this topic, key words could be maths and primary school |
| 3. Find synonyms or related terms | Look at your keywords and think of other words that mean the same thing. | For primary school, synonyms could be elementary school, grade school, junior school |
| 4. Start with a broad search | Begin with a basic search with a couple of ideas. | maths AND Primary School |
| 5. Use search operators | Add search operators to narrow or broaden your search. Combine operators to get even more precise results. | maths AND (primary school OR elementary school OR grade school OR junior school) |
| 6. Tweak your search | If you’re not finding what you need, tweak your search keywords or operators. | math* AND (“primary school” OR “elementary school” OR “grade school” OR “junior school”) |
| 7. Limit your results | Use database filters to get more relevant resources. | Filter by publication date, full-text sources, peer-reviewed journals, specific journals. |
Your toolkit for smarter searching
Looking to find exactly what you need, faster? Try using search operators. Search operators (sometimes called Boolean search) are special words or symbols you can add to your search to help narrow down your results. Think of them as shortcuts for smarter searching. While search operators can be a little different from one database to the next, the table below covers the ones you’ll use most often. Give them a try and see how your results improve.
| Operator | What it does | How it helps you | Example |
| * | Finds all variations of a word | Shorten a word to include multiple endings | exercis* will show results for exercise, exercises, exercising |
| “ ” | Searches for words in exact order | Groups words into a meaningful phrase | "Australian Institute of Sport" "aged care" "global warming" |
| ? | Finds single letter variations in a word | Handy for spelling differences | wom?n will show results for woman, women |
| AND | Searches for all terms entered | Narrows your results to include every word | nursing AND midwifery AND Australia |
| OR | Finds results with at least one term | Broadens your search to include synonyms | training OR teaching OR education |
| NOT | Excludes a term from results | Removes words or phrases you don’t want | teenage AND pregnancy NOT prevention |
| ( ) | Groups search terms or concepts | Combines ideas for a more focused search | "health care" AND nurs* AND (aged OR elderly) NOT dementia |