English 1A - Fox : Finding Your Topic

Imagine you're researching the issue of taxation on junk food or fast food. Which Boolean search below would return a manageable number of results? Vote in the poll, then open your choice for the search results in EBSCO

• Think about what you want to learn from your research. 

• Create a question and use research to search for the answer. 

• Search Credo to find a topic of interest or learn more about your topic. 
• Think about some questions you have about the topic as you read. 
• Choose your best question as your research topic. 

Once you have your question, look for keywords to search. 

Example

Question: Are self-driving cars ethical? 

Search Terms: self-driving cars AND ethics

Develop Strategies for Searching

• Use quotes around phrases
  • "hydraulic fracturing"    "junk food"     "drug abuse"    "peer groups"

• Use AND to narrow a search and combine different ideas
  • "junk food" AND taxation    "peer groups" AND "drug abuse"

• Use NOT to narrow a search by removing unwanted terms
  • "family formation" NOT marriage     religion NOT culture   

• Use OR to widen a search -- OR gives you mORe
  • "hydraulic fracturing" OR fracking    "peer group*" OR friend*
     
• Combine strategies to narrow or define a search more clearly
  • ("junk food" AND tax*) AND obesity   
  • (concussion OR "traumatic brain injur*") AND football
  • ("wildland firefighting OR "forest fires") AND safety

Use Truncation – cuts off the endings and returns all forms of a root word
Add an asterisk (shift 8) to the end of the word

• tax* returns taxes  taxing  taxation  taxed
• friend* returns friend friendly friends friendless