Psychology 120 (Tiemensma): Keywords & Search Terms

A. Boolean Operators

OR is mORe (joins similar terms)  e.g. hygiene OR "hand washing"

AND is less (joins dissimilar terms) e.g. "online dating" AND anxiety

Sample Search Using both AND and OR

anorexia OR bulimia

AND

prevention

B. Quotation Marks

Use quotation marks to search for a phrase

• "health psychology"
• "zika virus"
• "sleep deprivation"

C. Truncation

Use a symbol, the asterisk * is the most common, to look for variant endings of a word

• prevent* will search for prevent, prevents, prevention, etc.

D. Combine search strategies

Combine search strategies for more efficient searching

For example: ("brazil" OR "south america") AND "zika virus"

• Use a visual thesaurus like Snappy Words, Visuwords, or GraphWords
• Use references sources like Credo Reference to get background information and key words. (See widget above)
• Most EBSCO databases have a tool to help you discover subject terms. See EBSCO Academic Search Complete > Subject Terms
• Most ProQuest databases have a tool to help you discover subject terms: See PsycInfo > Thesaurus
• When you find a useful article, look at the database Subject Headings and record them as possible search terms. (Example)