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SPED Graduate Classes

Search Strategies

  • Conceive: What’s the assignment? What will your topic be?
  • Organize: What are you looking for? Historical information, current information, statistical data, peer reviewed article?
  • Keywords: Break your topic down into keywords or concepts.  Once you have keywords, find synonyms for those words and phrases. How can you combine them?
  • Start Broad: Start your searching with one or two keywords (broad topic) and narrow your search as you go with additional terms, altering what years of publication you’re looking for, only looking at peer reviewed articles, etc.
  • Analyze: Scan the results of your search to see what kind of articles you’re getting with your searches. If you’re finding good articles, look at those articles keywords and subject headings that were used in their records – these will help as you continue your search.
    • If you’re not finding anything exact, find something close and try those keywords and subjects
  • Reassess: If you’re not getting the results you’re looking for, you may need to change your searches, broaden or narrow your topic, or change your topic.  Ask for help if you’re not sure what your best option is.
  • Restart: Research is a cyclical process, you may need to start from scratch or just from an earlier step like choosing new keywords.

Keep track of your search and your results. Remember research is a process and you may try many things before you find what works best for your topic.

Keep track of your search terms and jot down other words you find while perusing the articles that result from your searches.

The "search history" option under the search box can also help with that.

Email, print, or save articles that might be useful for your research, even if you're not sure that you're going to use them.

Save to a Folder!  In most databases, you can add items to a folder to temporarily save them during your current search session. Remember to check it and email/print anything from the folder closing the browser. 

Create an account in EBSCOhost (My EBSCOhost) databases or sign in to Primo so you can save your searches, search results, and return to them later.

Let's say you are looking for information on the history of inclusion in the United States.

1. Begin by breaking your search into key concepts.

                              inclusion        and      United States

2. Brainstorm to identify other synonyms for these terms. For example:

                             inclusion                     United States

                             inclusive                      USA

                             mainstreaming            American*

   You may also want to add your history concept as a 3rd component.               

 

3.  Use the terms in #2 in your search. Combine the synonyms with the word "or" 

For example:   inclusion   or   inclusive   or   mainstreaming

 

4.  Select a database such as Education Source or ERIC.  Use the Advance Search mode to take advantage of the line structure by putting each concept with your synonyms in a separate line.

5.  After your first search, review your results. Make use of the Subject Headings option on the left of your screen to find other articles or use it to narrow down a large search results set.

inclusion_2

Once you have collected some articles, take a closer look at them.

Read and review what you have. Do you have enough information to support your topic?

If you don't like what you have or you don't have enough good information, go back to your search. Try some new keywords or a different database.

Explore some of the subject headings from the articles that you do want to use.

If some of your articles have bibliographies you might want to look at some of the sources listed in those bibliographies.

If you're stuck -- ask a librarian for help.

Reading these sections of an article/book will help you determine if the item you're looking at is relevant to your research.

  • Abstract: This is a summary of the article/item and will give you a good idea if it will be of use. This is the only part that will be in the item record and in the article. 
  • Introduction: This will tell you the history of the topic and the goal(s) of what you’re reading.
  • Methodology: How did they approach the topic/their research? *May not be included.
  • Literature Review: Summary of similar or previous research on the topic. *May not be included.
  • Discussion/Conclusion: The results of what they found and their implications.

Search Strategy (visual)

Conceive, organize, keywords, start broad, analyze and reassess

The Search Strategy Process

start with abstract, introduction and discussion/results

What are the parts of an article?

Limiters

Limiters allow you to restrict your search results to a documents that have particular characteristics. You can take advantage of these to focus your search so you retrieve results more closely matching the parameters of your assignment. Common limiters are as follows:

  • Publication Date: you can restrict your search to retrieve items published in a specific year or a range of years
  • Scholarly/Peer-reviewed: Most databases have an option to limit your search results to only those items that come from the peer-reviewed literature
  • Full Text: Check off the Full Text limiter option only if you have a large enough search result set and only need one or 2 articles. Be aware that we may have full text that isn't contained within the particular database you are searching. You won't see those citations if you limit to full text so use this limiter with caution!

Other ways to refine a search:

  • Take advantage of subject headings and add those to your search. They will help to more specifically focus the content of the items in your search results
  • Limit your search term to a particular field in the record by using the drop down boxes next to the box where you type your terms.

                           i.e. Limit your terms so that they only appear in the abstract

  • Consider adding another component to your search. Perhaps you want to look at a particular age group or grade level. You might want to look for items that look at a specific environment like the classroom or a clinical setting.