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Provides you with step by step help to start your assessments and develop your research skills during your first year at UniSA and UniSA College.

Plan your search

How to get started

Take time to think about your approach, including where to search and what keywords to use. Searching is an organic process. You will likely incorporate new keywords into your strategy as you learn more.

Watch this video for an overview:

Test your knowledge

Work through this tutorial (5-10 mins) to practice what you learnt in the video above.

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Strategies to identify alternative keywords

Start by highlighting the key content words and phrases (the main ideas) present in your task or question. These tell you what you need to find out or address.

Tip: Ask yourself how would I explain my task or question to another person?

For example, this question has three main ideas:

'Argue to which degree increased [working hours] [impact] on [family life]'


Tip: Also note any task words (e.g. argue) which tell you how to answer the task or question. Remember you don't need to search on these.

Synonyms and alternative keywords

Next consider any synonyms,or other keywords you could use for each main idea. Ask yourself, do you notice authors refer to the main ideas in your task in other ways?

Note these down as you find them in a table or mind map.

Key content words

working hours impact family life

Synonyms and alternative keywords

  • employee hours
  • job hours
  • work hours
  • shift work
  • shift worker
  • hours of work
  • impacting
  • effect
  • work life balance (broader)
  • family
  • families
  • parents
  • single parent
  • sole parent
  • women, female (related term)

Tip: As you note alternative keywords consider plurals, different word endings (e.g. parent versus parenting), different word spellings and common acronyms.

Case studies

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.

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