Sociology 15 (Xiong): Search Tips #1

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

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.