Education Research Guide

Search Concepts

• Find the important concepts from your research question/topic.
• Write down terms related to information you already know about your topic.
• Think about all the possible synonyms or other terminology for the concepts you have.
• Use a thesaurus within the databases.

Boolean Operators: Connecting Words

AND = Connects our different ideas, narrows results to include BOTH concepts.

OR = Searches for original concepts, as well as your synonyms/other terms, broadens results all possible results

* = truncation looks for all  possible different endings

teen* : finds  teen, teens, teenage, teenagers

adolescen* : finds adolescence, adolescents

Example:

Keyword 1: adolescen* OR middle school OR youth (the asterisk searches for different word endings like adolescent, adolescents, adolescence, etc.)

AND (the AND finds articles that connects all the terms, term variations, synonyms, and similar terminology)

Keyword 2: interven* OR bystander

AND

Keyword 3: bullying OR cyberbullying (the OR finds articles that mention bullying OR cyberbullying OR both )