Planning and carrying out a search

1. Introduction
This activity will introduce you to the basic steps of planning and carrying out an
effective search. An effective search will give you fewer, more relevant results to
answer your research question.

You will construct a search statement and then carry out a search on the Open
University Library’s search tool, Library Search. You can take the same steps to
plan and carry out a search on any search tool, whether Google, a library database
or any library catalogue.

Allow approximately 30 minutes to complete it.

After working through the activity you should be able to:

determine appropriate keywords for a search on a given topic, including synonyms

refine your search and the results you retrieve
plan and carry out an advanced search.
Image of a water polo player holding a ball
Polo air sport water (From Pixabay. Credit: Mahmur Margantu )
2. Selecting keywords
In order to understand how to search effectively we will take a sample assignment
question and turn it into a search statement. You could choose to work through the
activities with your own assignment question in mind.

The first step is to select appropriate keywords to use as search terms. You will
also need to think about synonyms or other phrases that have similar meanings -
these will help ensure your search results are complete.

A synonym is ‘a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another
word or phrase in the same language’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2020). For
example, ‘resistance training’ is a synonym for ‘strength training’.

Activity 1: Analysing the assignment question

Which words or phrases from the assignment question below could help you with your
search?

“Explore if strength training enhances water polo performance”

Click ‘Save and reveal discussion’ to see what we thought.

Activity 1: Analysing the assignment question, Your response to Question 1

Now that you have identified the key words and phrases in the assignment question,
the next stage is to combine these into a search statement.

A search statement is a clear, well-thought-out combination of words and symbols

that you use to find specific information online or in a database. It helps focus
your search, so you get the most relevant results without being overwhelmed by
unnecessary information. Think of it as a set of instructions that tells a search
engine or database exactly what you're looking for.

3. Combining keywords
3.1 Using AND to narrow your search
When searching a database, you will need to use the words AND, OR and NOT to
combine your search terms and phrases. This is called Boolean searching and will
help you to search more efficiently. AND between search terms will narrow your
search, OR broadens your search, and NOT excludes results where your second search
term is present.

Before we construct a search statement, let’s explore how Boolean expressions can
help us to combine keywords

Activity 2: Combining keywords in Library Search

We have identified that the following words/phrases are important for our search:

“strength training”
“water polo”
To combine these words, we can use the word AND for our initial search string:

“strength training” AND “water polo”

Enter this search string into Library Search and see how many results you retrieve.
We recommend you open Library Search in a new tab or window.

Look at a few of the journal article titles and abstracts to see if they would be
relevant for your search. Examine the key words (usually listed under the abstract
or summary) used by each article to see if there are any additional words or
phrases that may be relevant for your search.

Select 'Reveal discussion' to see what we thought.

Reveal discussion
3.2 Using OR to broaden your search
The first stage of our search brought back a number of useful articles. Looking at
the article summaries and associated keywords can provide you with other synonyms
and phrases that authors have used to describe your topic. Let’s add these to the
search statement and search again.

Activity 3: Combining keywords in Library Search

The following words/phrases will broaden our search:

“resistance training” OR “dry-land training”

“swim” OR “swimming” OR “swimmers”
You can use an asterisk to include alternative word stems in your search, so use
“swim*” to include “swimming” and “swimmers” in your search. NOT “swimwear” would
ensure that this unwanted additional search term was excluded from the search, but
you may not need to use it here.

It is good practice to put brackets around OR in a search statement if you are not
using drop-down boxes or your search can go wildly wrong! In this case the brackets
will ensure that every result will include either the phrase “strength training” or
“resistance training” or “dry-land training”, and either the phrase “water polo” or
words beginning with “swim”.

Your new, evolved search statement would be:

(“strength training” OR “resistance training” OR “dry-land training”) AND (“water

polo” OR swim*)
Now you have planned an advanced search, enter this search string into Library
Search and see how many results you retrieve. Then select 'Reveal discussion' to
see what we thought. We recommend you open Library Search in a new tab or window.

Remember to keep your Library search results open for the next activity.

Reveal discussion
So that you can access the full range of features in Library Search, you will need
to make sure you are signed in. To do this simply select the 'Search' button on the
Search page of the Library website, then select 'sign in'. This will give you
access to a personalised bookshelf and allow you to save details of articles you
are interested in. The Search page also gives further guidance on saving results.

The next activity will refine your search so that your results set is smaller, and
more relevant.

4. Refining your search

Refining a search often occurs after you have looked at your early results and
considered what is less relevant and can be trimmed away.

Different databases and search engines offer different ways of refining your
search. Library Search provides lots of filter options to help you narrow, or
refine your results. Here are some of the most commonly used. You might find others
useful:

Peer-reviewed journal articles. Choosing this option ensures that the search only
finds journal articles that have been reviewed by leading experts in the field,
which should increase the validity and reliability of the information
Language – English. Choosing this option means that your search will only include
articles written in English
Publication date narrows results to a date range you specify, so you can select to
see articles published within the last 5 years
Search only in the ‘Title’ rather than ‘Any field’ . This narrows your search to
find articles where your search terms occur in the article title. Although this
should vastly reduce your results and include more relevant articles, it may miss
important articles that do not have your search terms in their titles.
Let’s go back to Library Search now to refine our results set. We recommend you
open Library Search in a new tab or window.

Activity 4: Refining your search statement and your results

Go back to your results in Library Search

How many results did your latest search retrieve? What filters might help you
refine your search results to include more current, valid and relevant research?

You can use some of those already discussed, but there are others you might want to
apply. Choose one or two filters now and see what effects they have on your results
set.

Add filters using the ‘Advanced search’ box at the top of the page or using the
filter options on the right hand side of the page.

Then select 'Reveal discussion' to see what we thought.

Reveal discussion
You will need to make sure you save your results so that you can access them again.
Remember Library Search allows you to save the details of the resources you are
interested in. You could add key references to a Reference management tool or you
could choose to email the details of resources to yourself.

5. Search checklist
You should now be able to analyse an assignment question and construct an effective
search statement to find relevant information. You should also understand that you
may need to adapt your search depending on the type and number of results retrieved
and have some ideas about how you could do so.

Whatever topic you are researching, the general stages of your search will be the
same. This check-list will help you with your future searches.
Checklist: Planning and carrying out a search
Analyse the assignment question or topic
Which words from the assignment question could help you with your search?
Select keywords to use in your search, including synonyms
What are the ‘process’ words? Are there any phrases that you will need to search
for?
Can you think of any synonyms for the words you have selected?
Use Boolean expressions to combine the keywords in an appropriate search statement
Where could you use expressions like AND or OR to combine the terms?
Do you need to use NOT to exclude anything?
Don’t forget that you may need to use brackets if you are not entering the terms
into separate search boxes.
Test your search, and adjust it to expand or narrow the results, if necessary
Adding synonyms and the OR expression can help you expand your results.
Using the NOT expression can help you exclude unwanted topics or perspectives.
Use this quick activity to check what you’ve learnt about using search statements
and Boolean operators:

Activity 5 Appropriate search statements

Select the answer for
a)
here
Identify the content words in the following assignment question which will help you
construct a search statement:

“Explore if strength training enhances water polo performance”

strength training
Explore
water polo

Select the answer for

b)
here
Which of these search statements would you use to retrieve results that will not
mention swimming?

strength OR swimming
strength NOT swimming
strength AND swimming

Select the answer for

c)
here
Which search statement would you use to retrieve at least one of the search terms?

strength NOT swimming

strength OR swimming
strength AND swimming

Select the answer for

d)
here
Which statement would you use to retrieve results containing both terms?

strength NOT swimming

strength AND swimming
strength OR swimming
For help with searching for particular kinds of resources, see the Help and support
pages of the library website.

6. Summary
Now you have completed the activity you will be able to:

determine appropriate keywords for a search on a given topic, including synonyms

refine your search and the results you retrieve
plan and carry out an advanced search.
7. References
Oxford English Dictionary (2019) Oxford English Dictionary. Available at
https://premium-oxforddictionaries-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/definition/english/
synonym (Accessed: 4 June 2020).