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Literature searching

Searching bibliographic databases

Bibliographic databases are the key resources you will need to use for a literature search. Databases can be used to search for published studies and reports on studies relating to your topic.

Most databases allow you to create accounts which will enable you to save your search strategies and results that you find.

Details of key databases can be found in the Subject Guide most relevant to your research topic.

Structuring your search

Databases will retrieve results where the search terms you enter appear somewhere in the study.

You cannot expect to type in your research question and find relevant results. 

Only search for the key concepts in your question.

Your search should include all the terms which can be used for each concept of your topic e.g. for our example question – To what extent does social background effect the drop out rates of University students? These would be:

First concept: social background or social status or social class or ethnicity or race or culture or religion
Second concept: drop out or dropout or retention or retain 
Third concept: University or undergraduates or graduates or postgraduates or doctorate.

 

How you combine the different concepts of your question will depend on the database you are using, as they can have different search functionalities.

Basic searching

Some databases will only give you one line in which to enter your search. In this case, when entering your search terms, you should surround related terms for each concept in brackets i.e.

("social background" or "social status" or "social class" or ethnic* or race or cultur* or religio*) and ("drop out" or dropout or retention or retain*) and (Universit* or undergraduates or graduates or postgraduates or doctora*)

 

This will find results where at least one search term from each concept is included within a study.

Whilst the use of brackets works in most resources it may not work in every resource you use.

Advanced searching

Some databases provide what is called an Advanced Search option.

With this option you can add a separate line for each concept of your search.

Moreover, you can make your search more precise by selecting a field where you want your search terms to appear. This allows you to retrieve results where your search terms/keywords appear in a specific part of a document. The most common fields are:

Title – this will only retrieve results where your search terms appear in the title of a study.

Abstract – this will only retrieve results where your search terms appear in the summary of a study.

Text – this will retrieve results where your search terms appear anywhere in the text of a study.

Keyword – this will only retrieve results where your search terms appear a certain amount of times in a study.

In most cases we recommend using the abstract field as this doesn't make your search too narrow or too broad.

A screenshot of a search set up in a database. Each concept and its related terms are entered into a separate search fields. The AB Abstract - Supplied Abstract option is applied for each field in the corresponding dropdown.

Using the search history function

Some databases provide a Search History. This allows you to perform a separate search for each concept of your topic. Each of these searches will be added to the Search History.

The main benefit of using a Search History is that it gives you more control over your search, in that it allows you to perform different combinations of searches. See the screenshot below, for example: 

  1. If you want to make your search more narrow you can add another concept by combining the results from two or more searches.
  2. You can edit searches if you have made a spelling mistake or want to add extra search terms.

A screenshot of a database search history showing combined searches and editing function described in points 1 and 2 above.

Controlled vocabulary searching

Controlled Vocabulary/Subject Heading searching involves searching for studies categorised under a given subject. Each study within a (relevant) database is categorised, according to the topic(s) it covers, these categorisations are its Subject Heading terms. 

See our Advanced Literature Searching and Systematic Reviews for demonstrations on how to perform controlled vocabulary searches in databases in the EBSCOhost and Ovid Online platforms.