Library search with Research Librarian

These activities will outline the process of developing a research question, identifying keywords, and creating a search strategy for finding peer-reviewed articles.

Here is an outline of the process:

1. State your research topic.

For example, "How does obesity impact the academic achievement of school-aged children in the United States?"

2. Underline and highlight two or three of the most important concepts in the above research question. 

For example, "How does obesity impact the academic achievement of school-aged children in the United States?"

3. For each of these concepts, write synonyms or related terms.

For example,

• • obesity, overweight
  • academic achievement, academic performance, academic success
  • children, adolescents, teenagers

4. Construct a search string for use in library databases. Apply the following strategies:

• • Use asterisk* to truncate the word. Example: child* will find child, children, childhood
  • Use quotation marks to search as a phrase. Example: "academic achievement"
  • Use Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT to combine concepts. Enclose the same concepts within brackets or type them in different search boxes in library databases.

The search string will look like the following:

obes* OR overweight

AND

"academic achievement" OR "academic performance" OR  "academic success"

AND

child* OR adolescent* OR teen*

5. Search for peer-reviewed articles in library databases. Find a database for your topic in Database Finder. 

Following the five steps above, consider a topic of interest and complete this quiz.