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When conducting a literature search, it is important to develop a strategy so that your literature review is comprehensive and complete. Therefore it helps to develop a search strategy. The following are tips that can help you as you develop your search strategy.
A search strategy/framework is important to develop to help you identify how the components of your research question can turn into search terms. It may be helpful to use a Venn diagram to envision what you need to search for. While the ultimate goal is to come up with research in the center of the Venn diagram, other studies that tie into the Venn diagram may help build your literature review down towards the research in the center.
Coming up with search terms is important so that you can conduct your search effectively. It is a good idea to brainstorm possible search terms, including synonyms for the words, and also to conduct preliminary research so as to obtain some knowledge about what terms other researchers use when they are discussing a topic.
Boolean operators such as AND, OR, and NOT can also be used to find terms. AND will require both terms or phrases to be in the citation, OR will require either one citation or the other, and NOT excludes terms. Boolean operators also include the truncation symbol * which allow for varying endings. Many databases also let you search for phrases.
Using thesauruses or index terms help to identify terms via controlled vocabulary, so that you can identify how the database is calling a particular subject. Many databases also index and document citations with this vocabulary, therefore facilitating the finding of articles. When developing a literature review, it can therefore be helpful to use thesauruses and indexing terms.
Filters or limiters can be used to further limit results, and are useful after you retrieve a list of results. Using filters, you can select different aspects such as, for example, articles within the last five years, methodology, language, and more.
It is also important to identify the format of the works in a database. For example, some databases have only the citation and abstracts, some only the citation, and others have the full text. Knowing what to expect will help you, but do not just search the citations for a term.
While doing all of the previous steps is important for conducting a good search, it is also important to document what was done. This allows you to remain organized and make revisions as necessary, and will help you document your methods section and help the process to be replicated.
