Searching the databases can be tricky if you've never used them before. There are some specific strategies you can learn that will make the process much easier. See below for instructions and tips on how to effectively search the databases available to you as a CPTC student.
Using databases can be quite different than using Google. While Google is designed to respond to the natural way people talk (i.e. complete sentences), databases require you to break your subject down into keywords.
Let's say your research question is
How has fast fashion changed the way young people feel about their appearance?
The database works by matching instances of the words in your question with instances of the words throughout its entire collection of articles: the more your keywords show up in an article, the higher it will show in your results.
This means, though, that if you typed this complete question into a database, it's going to give you articles that mention of all those words, including the irrelevant ones (how, way, about). This will potentially skew your results.
You're really only interested in articles that mention the following words or concepts:
These terms are going to serve as your initial set of keywords (also known as search terms).
If you just use these terms to start, you have a pretty good chance of getting relevant results. You may also find that there are other words you can use (like "youth" for "young people" or "presentation" for "appearance"). This is where Boolean operators come in.
Boolean Operators are three different words -- AND, OR, NOT -- that you can use to organize your keywords:
Let's return to our earlier research question.
We'll start with the keywords we developed:
fast fashion AND young people AND appearance
This tells the database to look for articles that mention all of these words.
Pro-tip: it is not necessary to use "AND" as the database automatically assumes that any words you type in must be included.
The more ANDs and keywords you add, the less results you'll get as you are asking the database to narrow its search. However, the articles should be more relevant to you than if you just did a search for "fast fashion" or "young people" as they'll have mentioned all of your search terms.
On the other hand, let's say you're not getting enough results. Maybe the scientific literature uses a different word, or maybe there are more than one way to say what you are looking for.
Going back to our original example, "presentation" is another word we could use for "appearance," so if we combine them using OR like this:
we might get more results that if we just used "appearance" because the database knows to give results that include either word.
We could also use to be more specific about what we are looking for. There aren't really other words that mean "fast fashion," but we could use specific brands that fall under this category to increase the likelihood of getting relevant results. For example, we could try
"fast fashion" OR Zara OR "Forever 21" OR "H&M"
Thus, the OR operator can be used to connect similar words or synonyms together.
The NOT operator is a little tricky to use. You'll only want to use it if unrelated words or concepts keep showing up in your searches. For example, "heavy metals" contribute to pollution but that term is also the name of a musical genre. If you use the NOT operator like this:
you will eliminate any results that are related to music.
Be careful with the NOT operator, though. You could unintentionally eliminate relevant results if the excluded term is still somewhat related to your search!
We've talked about keywords and Boolean operators, how do we put these all in the database, though?
We will nest our synonyms/similar terms together in parentheses, and use ANDs to connect it all together:
("fast fashion" OR "Forever 21" OR "H&M") AND (youth OR "young people" OR "Gen Z") AND (appearance OR presentation)
Using the parentheses () helps the database understand how the Boolean operators and keywords relate to each other.
You may have noticed that some of our terms have quotation marks around them and some don't. When your search term is more than one word long (like "fast fashion" or "young people"), it can be helpful to put quotation marks around it so that the database knows to search the complete phrase.