Search techniquesAND, OR, NOT, truncation & proximity searching

1. Search techniques

Most databases offer standard search techniques to help you get the best possible search results. These include:

• Boolean operators AND OR NOT to broaden or narrow searches• Truncation to broaden your results• Proximity operators to search phrases more efficiently• Proximity operators

Tip! Standard search techniques do not work well in Summon. For more advanced searching you will usually get better results by searching individual databases.

2. Boolean operators

Boolean operators are very useful for broadening or narrowing your search results:

AND narrows (finds all words)

OR broadens (finds any word)

NOT narrows (by excluding a word)

(TIP! use AND NOT in Science Direct)

Tip! It is good practice to use upper case for Boolean operators although this is not essential for every database.

3. Boolean - ANDAND narrows your search results by finding only those articles containing ALL words.

AND is usually used to link different concepts together.

woundNursingCancerBoth

words

Cancer AND Nursing

4. Boolean - OR

OR is the most commonly used operator and finds articles containing ONE or MORE terms.

OR is usually used to link similar concepts together.

OncologyCancer

Cancer OR Oncology

Bothwords

5. Boolean - NOTNOT is a useful way of excluding any unwanted search terms.

Here NOT finds articles about CANCER but not LUNG.

Cancer NOT Lung

Canceronly

Lung only

Both

6. Truncation

* Searches for alternative word endings and increases your search results:

Nurs* finds: Nurse, nurses, nursing

Child* finds: Child, children, childhood, childbirth

Radiograph* finds: Radiographer, radiographers, radiography

Manag* finds: Manager, management, managing

Midwi* finds: Midwife, midwives, midwifery

TIP! Be careful not to truncate too soon, e.g. car* or comp*, as you will retrieve too may false hits.

7. Phrase searching

There are several ways to search for phrases:

Pain management•May not find words as a fixed string - words may become dissociated from each other and appear within different parts of the citation. Therefore, not all articles found may be relevant.

Pain N2 management •Finds pain within two words of management - it could also find management of severe pain as word order is disregarded.

“Pain management”•Finds this phrase only as a fixed string which can be limiting.

8. Proximity (NEAR) operator

The NEAR operator finds search words within a specified range (Note: word order is disregarded) e.g.

Cinahl nurs* N2 educat*

Proquest nurs* N/2 educat*

These searches would find any of the following phrases:

• Education for nursing • Educating public health nurses

• Nursing education • Education for professional nursing

9. Proximity (Within) operator

The W (within) or P (pre) operators find search terms within a specified number of words from each other (Note: word order is preserved) e.g.

Cinahl nurs* W2 educat*

Proquest nurs* P/2 educat*

ScienceDirect nurs* W/2 educat*

These searches would find the following phrases:

• Nursing education • Nurse educators

10. Use of brackets (parentheses)

In Basic Search (single search box) the order of precedence for executing Boolean operators is: AND, NOT, OR. An AND operation will be performed before an OR operation if both are included.

This search below does not make sense - it would find either articles about asthma and children or articles just about infantsAsthma AND children OR infants

To make it logical you would need to include brackets:

Asthma AND (children OR infants)

TIP! Advanced Search options help you avoid this problem by enabling the use of a separate search row for each concept.

11. Subject headings searching

•Keyword searching only finds references where your search words or phrases appear in the title or abstract.

•You may not have thought of all the relevant keywords or synonyms, or the author may not have included the terms you were expecting at all, despite it being a major topic of the article.

•Using subject headings should retrieve those articles that are about that subject, even if the article itself doesn't use those words.

•Subject headings are a controlled vocabulary used by a database to classify what an article is about. Using subject headings can improve your search results and should be used in systematic searching when possible.