Before you begin searching, you should have a plan in place. Beginning your search without a strategy or plan can leave you feeling overwhelmed and defeated.
Searching is an iterative cycle. This means that you might need to repeat your search several times before you find exactly what you're looking for. This might mean refining your strategy or making changes along the way.
Once you break your topic into the main concepts that represent it, you should start brainstorming synonyms and related terms or concepts that represent each main concept. This is important because authors can use different words to describe the same thing. Having more search terms available will help you get the most relevant search results.
Below is a sample breakdown for a research question about why college athletes aren't paid.
Don't skip this step! This will provide you with a well thought out list of keywords that you can use in your search.
Placing search terms inside quotation marks ("") will ensure that those words appear next to each other, in that order in your search results.
A question mark (?), also known as a wildcard, is used to represent a single character anywhere in the word. It's most helpful when there are variable spellings of a word.
An asterisks, also known as truncation in searching, is placed at the end of a word stem to provide you with variable endings.
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