Brainstorming Keywords
Always start by brainstorming keywords before doing the keyword search. First, break the topic down into parts, then brainstorm synonyms for each part.
For example if your research question was : How do costs for hypertension treatment compare to costs for hypertension prevention?
| Concepts | Synonyms, Broader Terms, Narrower Terms |
| costs | cost, money, financial |
| hypertension | hypertension, blood pressure, heart disease |
| treatment | treat, treatments, exercise, diet, "drug therapy" |
| prevention | prevent, preventive, prevents, wellness |
Think of both synonyms AND specific or broader examples.
If your topic includes a development issue, use terms for that issue in general as well as specific approaches you know of. For the issue, you may also want to use terms for various aspects of the issue as well as the broader term.
Combining Keywords and Building the Search
Using AND & OR
Example: "land reform" AND Brazil
Use OR to connect terms when you want EITHER term – when you are using synonyms
Example: "land reform" OR "agrarian reform" OR "landless movement"
AND & OR Together – use PARENTHESES (or separate search boxes if a database provides those)
Example : ("land reform" OR "agrarian reform") AND (MST or "Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Terra") AND Pernambuco
To search for phrases:
Put them in quotation marks.
Examples :
Truncation allows you to search for multiple forms of a word with one term. Examples:
hospital* = hospital, hospitals, hospitalization...
insur* = insurance, insurer, insured.....
Beware of truncating too short - and getting irrelevant things, for example just cost* would include too many words and all would not be related what you are doing for this course such as costal or costume