Think about your approach, including where best to search and what keywords you can use. Searching is an organic process, you will likely change your search strategy as you find new keywords that are relevant.
Watch this video for an overview on building a search strategy:
Work through this tutorial (5-10 mins) to practice what you learnt in the video above.
Read your assignment task or question and highlight the key content words and phrases (the main ideas) present. These tell you what you need to find out more about or investigate further.
Need help? Ask yourself how would I explain my task or question to another person?
For example, this question has three main ideas:
Note: any task words (e.g. argue). You don't need to search on these, instead they tell you how to answer the question or task.
Next consider any other keywords you could use for each main idea. Are there direct synonyms or other related keywords you could use when searching?
Ask yourself, do you notice authors referring to the main ideas in your task in other ways in the literature?
Note these down as you find them in a table or mind map.
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Key content words |
working hours | impact | family life |
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Synonyms and alternative keywords |
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Tip: As you note other keywords to use consider plurals, different word endings (e.g. parent versus parenting), different word spellings and common acronyms.
If you have a case study for your assessment task use this guide to help you with how to analyse it. Remember when reading a case study you are still looking for those key content words to investigate further.