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How to Start a Social Sciences Research Project: Creating a Search Strategy

This guide suggests some ways to start a research project.

What is the Goal of Research?

When we research, what are we doing? What are we looking for?

Our goal is to find information to answer our research question. Usually, each resource (article, book chapter, dataset) can answer part of your research question.

We will need to combine information from different resources to fully answer your question.

Example research question:

How does subcontract work affect hospital employees?

I use this research question to find resources. Through doing several searches, I find these resources:

  1. An article about how subcontract workers feel like they have job instability.
  2. An article about how job instability makes workers more likely to have depression.
  3. An article about how hospital employees who have depression have lower work productivity.

I can combine these different resources to talk about how hospital workers are affected by subcontract work because subcontract work positions make the workers more likely to feel instability, and the workers might then have higher rates of depression. I can also talk about how this might lower the work productivity.

(In a real research project, I should have more than three articles backing my claims.)

Searching for Articles Video

Turning your Research Question into a Search

A database is searched by creating a search query. A search query is the combination of:

  • Search terms - These are the words or phrases you want the database to look for. Databases may search the article's text and/or they may search the description of the article.
  • Boolean Operators - AND OR NOT
  • Punctuation -
    • "complete phrases" in quotes
    • Wild card * allows you to leave the end of a word flexible. ex: read* tells the database to search for all these terms at once: reading, reader, readmit...
  • Filters - The available filters depend on the database. Some filters only become options after you have clicked to run the search.

This is an example of a search in Academic Search Complete:

Screenshot of Academic Search Complete search function. Two terms are entered, "cooking shows" and "health behavior."

Tricks for Choosing Search Terms

Using Your Research Question

Turn your research question into search terms.

  1. Write out your research question. How do short-term employment contracts affect hospital healthcare workers' mental well-being?
  2. Identify the important words or terms. Look at the nouns that specify the scope of your topic. 
    1. What people? Contract healthcare workers
    2. Where? Hospitals
    3. What kind of issue? Mental health
  3. Write out each important word/term. List synonyms or terms that have the same feel.

Using an Article You Like

Look at that article's keywords. Keywords are usually written underneath the article's listing in your search results. 

Different databases use different keywords. By reusing the keywords, you are learning to speak that database's "language".

Using Search Suggestions

Some databases will give you suggestions for search terms when you start typing in a search box. These are terms that the database absolutely recognizes. 

Sometimes, the suggestions will be several terms in the same text box, all separated by the Boolean Operator 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 specific research topic!