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EDCE 570-002

Brainstorming

What are the most important concepts in your research question?  What are different terms for each concept?

Keyword 1: bullying, cyberbullying

Keyword 2: intervention, intervening, peer, peers, interpersonal, bystander, helping, empathy

Keyword 3: adolescents, adolescence, middle school, youth

Construct a search. Keep track, you'll probably try many different combinations

Search box preview with the search terms bullying in the top line, the word AND interven* OR bystander OR peer* in the second line. The words AND teen* OR adolecen* OR middle school in the third line.

AND = Terms must be present, narrows results

OR = any of the terms may be present, broadens results

* = wildcard looks for different endings

Example: 

teen* : finds  teen, teens, teenage, teenagers

adolescen* : finds adolescence, adolescents

Help with Search Terms

1.  Do a search and pay attention to how the results were tagged with subject words.  Jot down other descriptive terms from article titles and abstracts.

2.  A really good thesaurus like the ones ERIC and PsycINFO have can help you find related, narrower and broader terms.  Along with basic searching tips, both of these short handouts with video links show you how to take advantage of the thesaurus.

Comparing Find It & Subject Databases

Find It @ USC Libraries Subject Specific Databases  
A black box with several different shapes of different colors being connected to it with arrows from different angles. A black box with five different boxes all different shades of blue being connected by straight arrows.  

Find It gathers metadata (all the info that describes something) from a LOT of sources--publishers, database creators, library catalogs, etc.  The same thing might not be described the same way.  

Because it is so wide-ranging and diverse, to get the most out of Find It try a lot of different searches using a variety of keywords.

A database like ERIC, Education Source, PsycINFO, PubMed or SPORTDiscus concentrates on the literature of a discipline.  Databases add value by assigning consistent descriptors/subject terms.

Because a specialized database represents a smaller universe, a big part of searching effectively is making sure you are including terms the database uses.  Look and see if your database has a thesaurus.

 

Advanced Search in Find It @ USC Libraries

Use Advanced Search to enter more complex searches with OR for synonyms on the same line.  Be sure to capitalize OR, otherwise the same search techniques you use in other databases (* for a wildcard and "quotes around phrases") apply.

Example of the find it at SC advanced search box. The connecting words OR and AND are capitalized in between the search terms culturally responsive or culturally relevant

Tips for other databases

Dissertations and Theses Global

Control the number of results and relevancy by changing where your terms are searched.  Anywhere searches the entire dissertation if there's a PDF.  Anywhere except full text searches the title, abstract, subjects

A drop down box in ProQuest with the "Anywhere except full text - NOFT" option highlighted.

Set your Library Links in Google Scholar

Connect to content we've paid for.

 

PsycINFO

Scroll down the search page to find limits, including:Age Group (Childhood to Very Old), Population Group (Human, Animal, Male, Transgender, Female, Inpatient, Outpatient), Methodology.

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