Devise search terms
Introduction
After defining the information problem and formulating search questions, you start coming up with search terms. Using the right search terms is very important. You may be used to entering some terms in the search bar. If you do not immediately find the information you are looking for that way, you may mistakenly think the information is not there. By coming up with search terms in a structured way before searching, your search results will be much better.
Note: Search terms are part of your search plan, the plan you make before you start searching. A search plan consists of: search question, search terms, sources of information and search method.
Think up terms
During the problem analysis, if necessary, you divided the main question into a number of sub-questions and translated them into search questions.
An effective way of searching is the "building block method." You first divide your (search) question into a number of components. On that basis, you devise specific search terms with which to search.
Example:
You are looking for literature on food in retirement homes. Your question is: What is the influence of food on the social well-being of elderly people in nursing homes?
The main components of this question are:
- Nutrition
- Elderly people (in nursing homes)
- Social well-being
For each of the components come up with different search terms.
| nutrition |
elderly people (in nursing homes) |
social well-being |
| food |
aged |
quality of life |
| breakfast |
elderly |
social |
| menu |
dementia |
well-being |
| appetite |
nursing home |
loneliness |
| vegetables |
geriatric |
tasty |
| eating |
etc |
etc |
| etc |
|
|
When thinking of search terms, you can think of:
| |
examples |
| compounds |
field work
fieldwork
|
| specific terms |
food
fruit
vegetables
breakfast
|
| spelling variants |
80 year old
eighty year old
behavior
behaviour
|
| synonyms |
old age
geriatric
elderly
mild cognitive impairment
dementia
food
eating
|
| inflections |
feeding
foods
|
| translations |
vieillesse
bejaarden
Alter
|
| abbreviate or not |
end-of-life
EoL
|
| antonyms (words with opposite meanings) |
social
well-being
loneliness
tasty
bland
|
Tips for search terms
Scientists and other professionals use professional terms in their publications. If you don't know these terms, you can easily miss important publications. Also keep in mind that the language of communication in the scientific community is English.
- Review some scientific publications or professional publications on your topic to find out specific subject terms.
- Look for specific (subject) terms by trying out some search terms you already have. Search the results for new search terms. You can use citation tracking for this purpose.
Tools: dictionaries and thesauri
If you are not yet versed in the terminology of your subject you can use a number of resources when coming up with search terms:
Dictionaries
- General dictionaries
- Translation dictionaries (if you are searching in another language)
- General translation dictionaries such as the Van Dale Dictionaries
- The translation function in Google or online dictionaries
- Wikipedia
Thesauri
A thesaurus is also called a synonym book. It is a publication used in a similar way to a dictionary, but for looking up synonyms. During your studies, the following two digital thesauri are of interest:
You can use the thesaurus function in MS Word while writing your report. This is under the "Review" tab.
A thesaurus belonging to a database. Subject-specific databases are particularly interesting for this purpose. For more information see thesaurus.
Summary
In this module, you learned why good search terms are important. You now know how to break down your search query into components and what to look for when coming up with search terms.
