When you research a topic, you are looking for resources that provide more information and context on your topic. There are two major ways to find articles:
A database is a collection of journal articles (and usually other items) that you can search all at once. Databases are usually searched using keywords or terms.
How do you know what search terms to use when you create a search?
Searching is an iterative process. You will likely have to make multiple searches while trying out different search terms and different combinations of the search terms. You don't know what is out there until you make a search.
Our example research question for this project is:
How does the level of citizen participation in local government decision-making processes impact the effectiveness of public service delivery?
To create search terms, we need to identify the key terms in our research question. For this question, we can pick out:
It is important to keep phrases in quotes. This helps the search function understand that you are looking for "local government", and you are not just any article that uses the word "local".
Each of these terms we can search for. We can combine the terms into the same searches. Combining search terms means that you can search multiple terms at once. All of your search results should relate to both terms. This is especially important for terms like "mass participation," which is also used in sports psychology and physics!
We can also use synonyms or equivalent terms for each keyword.
Example: "Citizen participation" can also be: "citizen engagement" or even "civic engagement"
We can also search related ideas, such as looking for articles about "city government", "city councils", or "county government".
You can turn your research question into search terms. This is a good way to make sure that you are looking for resources that relate to your paper's scope and topic.
Identify the important words or terms in your research question. These are more likely to be the nouns that you use to specify the scope of your topic.
Write out each important word/term as it appears in your research question. Next to the term, list synonyms. You can also search words that mean the same thing.
You can use our digital search term worksheet to turn your research question into search terms.
When you find an article you like, look at that article's keywords. These are the words the database attaches to the article. They are usually written underneath the article's listing in your search results.
Different databases use different keywords. By reusing the keywords that the database likes, you are learning to speak that database's "language".
Some databases will give you suggestions for search terms when you start typing in a search term textbox. You can select those suggestions if you want. Of course, you can always type out your own text to search, but these suggestions are terms that the database absolutely recognizes.
Often, the suggestions will be several terms in the same box, all separated by or. This means that the search engine will search for all those terms at once.
Always check before you select a string of terms. Some of the terms might not be equivalent for your research topic!
It is normal and expected to do multiple searches to find enough useful materials to complete your research project. Don't worry about if your first few searches are not fruitful.
You can try to limit your search results in a few different ways:
You can expand your search in a few ways.
If you are doing research for a literature review, then an unsuccessful search may still be useful for your research. You can include in the literature review that this topic has been under-researched.
It can be hard to choose when it is time to stop your research. The average number of sources you need will vary, but larger/longer research projects usually need more resources. After you have started creating your research project/paper, you can always decide to do more searches if you realize you are missing important information or context.
There shouldn't be a "perfect" resource that completely answers your research question. Instead, you will be finding resources you can fit together to answer your research question.