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Honors College Research Program: Keywords - Search Term Generation

This guide was created to support undergraduates doing research through the Honors College program.

Choosing a Topic

You won't go anywhere without a topic. Choosing a good topic makes a huge difference in how well your writing process will go. A good topic meets the requirements of the assignment, intrigues you, and leads to an interesting thesis statement that can be supported by reputable sources. In many ways, the hardest part of research is not the writing, it's not the research itself, it is choosing what you want to write about. Some tips for choosing a topic:

Step 1: Get Ideas

  1. Your class readings or textbook can be a good source of ideas.
  2. For current topics, watch the news, or browse internet news sites, the newspaper, or news magazines.
  3. Stuck for ideas? Try one of these websites linked in the "Useful Links" box on this page.

Step 2: Get Background Information to Focus Your Topic

  1. Subject-specific encyclopedias have a wealth of background information that can provide you with a strong foundation upon which to build your research.
  2. Once you have a topic idea, it's time to focus on your topic. You may need to narrow or broaden your topic.

Step 3: Identify Search Terms and Strategy

  1. The library catalog, databases, and search engines don't answer your questions - they return search results. To get the best results, you need to enter good search terms.
  2. Identify the key concepts of your topic, then brainstorm other terms that are related to these key concepts.

Coming up with Keywords

We are going to use a sample topic to show how you might come up with keywords. For this example, we will use the topic:

"Alcohol abuse on college campus."

We will start by circling our two keywords or key concepts:

So we are starting with the keywords 'alcohol abuse' and 'college campus'. This is a very broad topic, we will probably find a lot of articles and we will need to narrow our topic down. So we will need to add a third keyword. Let's say that we are interested in treatment. So now our topic might be:

"The Treatment of alcohol abuse on college campus."

 

Example Topic/Keyword Worksheet

Example topic: The treatment of alcohol abuse on college campuses.

 

KEYWORD

SYNONYM-narrow

SYNONYM-broaden

RELATED TERM

Treatment

Alcohol detox, Alcohol detoxification, Alcohol Treatment

Intervention, Therapy

Detox, Detoxification, Suport, Al-Anon

Alcohol abuse

Alcoholism, Alcohol addiction, Alcohol dependence

Alcohol

Alcohol use, Addiction

College Campus

Living on Campus, Living in Dormitories

College, University, Campus

Higher Education, Dormatories


Step 1: Identify keywords.

Step 2: Identify synonyms.

Step 3: Identify related terms by thinking of both broader and narrower ideas.

Help! I'm finding too much!

When you are finding too many results, your search terms are too broad or generic. There are several ways to narrow your search effectively.

Most databases allow you to use limits to narrow your search results. Common limiters include Full Text, Scholarly or Peer-Reviewed Journals, and Date. Others may include language, document type, and publication/source type. 

You can also use Boolean Search Operators to limit your search, for information on using Boolean Operators this way, see the "How to Search Databases" tab.

Adding more search terms will also help you to narrow your results.

You can also modify your keywords to narrow or make them more specific. For examples on narrowing your search terms, see the box to the left and the example worksheets at the bottom of the page.

 

Help! I'm not finding anything!

When you are finding too few results, your search terms are too narrow or specific. There are several ways to broaden your search effectively.

Choose to search in a specific database that includes articles in your field or topic that you are interested in.  

You can use Boolean Search Operators to broaden your search, for information on using Boolean Operators this way, see the "How to Search Databases" tab.

Using fewer search terms will also help you to broaden your results.

You can also modify your keywords to broaden or make them more general. For examples of broadening your search terms, see the box to the left and the example worksheets at the bottom of the page.

Keyword Worksheets

These are copies of keyword worksheets. Use these worksheets in class or while refining your topic on your own. Just click on the link!