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:

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