Tips for Increasing Your Researching Powers

Whether using a search engine on the Web or searching a subscription database provided by the college, you will get better results if you do the following things:

(1) List of search terms and phrases: Create a list of all the words and phrases that relate to your subject BEFORE you start your research. Think of all the synonyms or substitute words also. When searching one author might use the word "teenager" where another author might us the word "youth" when writing about the same group of people. You may miss good articles by not thinking of and searching with all of the words and phrases that might be used for your topic.

(2) Advance search options: Most databases and search engines have an "Advance Search" option. It is usually one click away. What using this features does for you is that it provides more options for either narrowing or expanding your search - usually for narrowing. Narrowing allows you to hone in on just the facts that you need and helps you to avoid a lot of extraneous information that may or may not be useful. So look around the page and select "Advance Search" when offered.

(3) Select Full-Text option: Within most subscription databases there will be a place to select to see in your search-results only articles that have the full-text available for you to review. Many databases have some items that only offer an abstract and not the complete text of the item. To save time, select the "full-text" options when offered. {Note: Making this selection could mean that you will miss abstract of articles that are relevant to your topic. But, there are usually plenty of materials available in full-text, so missing a few will not matter.}