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Before you start actually searching for information for your assignment, first:
1. Understand your topic and task
2. Identify main research concepts and alternative terms
3. Connect research concepts to form a search strategy
The video below shows the full process.
1. Understand your topic
You must have a broad understanding of your topic before you can search for information or write your assignment. Consider:
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What do you need to do? -
What do you know? Or need to explore further?
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Do you need to define any terms?
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What types of evidence do you need?
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Does information need to be current?
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Do any theories apply to your topic?
- Do you need facts and figures, or statistics?
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Assignment planningA short guide on the steps you need to plan out your assignment successfully.
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Understanding assignments and instruction wordsThe next step is to try and focus your question as much as possible. This makes it easier to identify what to search for later, to actually do the search, and to determine whether the resources found are relevant.
Define terms, get background information
Reference books include encyclopaedias, handbooks, dictionaries, bibliographies and directories. Use them to define terms, or find topic overviews. Find more by searching the Library Catalogue.
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Mosby's Pocket Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing and Health Professions
by Call Number: available onlinePublication Date: 2014 -
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Interventions and Policies to Enhance Wellbeing
by Call Number: available onlinePublication Date: 2014 -
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2. Identify research concepts and alternative terms
Example question: Does an improvement in drinking water quality improve the incidence of cholera in Haiti and Papua New Guinea?
The main concepts in your question form the foundation of your search:
- drinking water quality - there are 2 parts to this concept: drinking water AND quality
- cholera
- Haiti
- Papua New Guinea
To cover the range of terminology used in the literature, you must also identify any synonyms or similar keywords for each concept:
- drinking water, potable water
- cholera, Vibrio cholerae
- Haiti, Hispaniola
- Papua New Guinea, Papua Niugini
Also consider:
- Plurals, different word forms ( drinking vs drinks),
- Different spellings (Haiti vs Hayti), and hyphenated words (drinking water vs drinking-water)
- Acronyms (Papua New Guinea vs PNG)
Once you have your list of terms for each concept, you can combine them to create a search strategy.
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Plan your searchA short guide on steps you need to plan out your assignment successfully
3. Connect research concepts to form a search strategy
First, simplify your search. Use truncation, wildcards and phrases to cover word variations:
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Truncation |
finds unlimited characters after the symbol must be used at the end of a word/wordstem |
drink* finds drink, drinks, drinking etc... |
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Wildcard |
finds zero or one character to replace the symbol can be used anywhere in a word |
cholera? finds cholera, cholerae
ha?ti finds hayti, haiti |
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Phrases |
keeps two or more words together in the entered order |
"Papua New Guinea" |
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Now connect your remaining terms using AND, OR.
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Use OR to connect different terms within the same concept
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Use AND to connect each concept.
For example:
"drink* water" OR "potable water"
AND
quality
AND
cholera?
AND
Ha?ti OR Hispaniola
AND
"Papua New Niugini"
Next steps
Now you have finalised your search strategy, you are ready to start finding the evidence. Click the image to learn how.
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