3 Module 2: Developing Search Strategies
Janel Simons
Developing A Search Strategy
Building on the principle developed in the previous chapter that asking questions is at the heart of the research process, this chapter focuses on the idea that identifying key words and terms relevant to or contained in your research question is integral to developing a search strategy.
By the end of this section you will be able to:
- Identify key terms of your research question and generate related words to use when looking for information
- Navigate selected resources and databases to locate information relevant to your research, revising search terms as needed
- Locate and save two scholarly articles on your topic
What is a search strategy?
A search strategy is an organized way of looking for information that is relevant to your topic or research question. A good search strategy is based on your curiosity and combines the keywords and concepts that will guide you to relevant information.
Why develop a search strategy?
Searching databases and other places for information in a consistent, controlled way will save you time and help you to stay focused within the boundaries (or scope) of your research question. With the abundance of information that is available to us, it’s useful to be able to eliminate from your search results information that is not relevant. In other words, developing a good search strategy can help you refine your search terms and (as much as is possible) weed out information that you don’t want or need in order to provide a well-informed answer to your research question.
How do I create a search strategy?
Once you have selected a topic and developed a research question, the next step of the research process is to learn more about your topic / research question by searching for information. No matter where you look for information, you will likely have more success with your searches if you identify the most important concepts or keywords from your research question and pair those terms with synonyms and related concepts to create various search strings and phrases. Developing a good search strategy begins with generating a list of possible terms to use when looking for information.
Watch this video (about 3 mins)
Brainstorming Keywords. Portland State University Library. 2014. https://youtu.be/JmtIBn5tyEw.
Activity
generate key terms for your topic
Working with the research question you developed in the previous module, use this worksheet to do the following:
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- Part 1. Identify the key terms and concepts represented in your research question.
- Part 2. Once you have identified your key terms and concepts, generate some synonyms and related words.
Save a copy of your work–you’ll be building on this exercise and using what you’ve created here to begin looking for information in the next activity.
Where to search?
Where you search can impact the kinds of sources you’re likely to find. Though search engines on the open web (like Google) are easy to use for finding information about all kinds of things, they aren’t necessarily great for finding scholarly sources. For much of your academic work, you will be required to use library databases, which don’t always work in familiar ways but often provide access to sources of information that are not readily available on the open web. Today we will be searching with the Google Scholar search engine (which is different from searching with Google on the open web) and in NebraskAccess databases.
Before we get started searching, though, let’s consider some of the strengths and weaknesses of these different paths to scholarly articles. You can use either or both of these tools to search for articles.
| Subject Database (like those in NebraskAccess) | Google Scholar | |
| Strengths |
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| Weaknesses |
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| Best For |
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Table adapted from Portland State University https://guides.library.pdx.edu/highschool.
Activity
Locate information on your topic
Returning to the Planning your Search Strategy worksheet from the previous activity, complete the following steps:
- Part 3. Using the key terms and related words you generated earlier, search for information on your topic using NebraskAccess and Google Scholar.
- Identify two useful articles from your search results.
Additional considerations
As you experiment with and refine your search terms, you may consider keeping track of the searches you do. For more on how you might track your search strategy, including a template for creating a research log and an example of a literature review matrix, see the section in the Appendix on Keeping Track of Your Searches.
At the end of this session
- At the end of this session you should have located two articles relevant to your research question.
Next Session “Reading and Evaluating Sources”