Sociology 15: Sociological Research Methods (Polonijo)

Boolean operators are words you can use between your search terms to either broaden or limit your search.

1. Use OR to broaden your search and to join SIMILAR terms.

• Example: "academic achievement" OR "academic excellence"

2. Use AND to narrow your search and join DISSIMILAR.

• Example:  "academic achievement" AND motivation

3. Use NOT to narrow your search.  This will omit items with that term.

• Example:  "(academic achievement" AND motivation) NOT elementary

variables OR factors OR predictors OR influence OR relationship OR effects OR affect

Those these terms can be used in numerous contexts, at times they can be useful in constructing a search. 

Quotation Marks

Use quotation marks to search for a phrase.

• "higher education"
• "academic achievement"
• "substance abuse"

Truncation

Use a symbol (* is the most common) to look for variant endings of a word.

• fratern* will search for fraternity, fraternities, fraternal, etc.