Boolean Operators

AND

• AND limits to results with both of the connected keywords
• Use AND to narrow you research and return fewer results

OR

• OR limits to results which contain either of the connected terms
• Use OR to broaden your search and return more results

NOT

• NOT limits to results which contain the first term but exclude the second, connected term
• Use NOT to narrow your search and return fewer results

Phrase Searching 

• Use quotation marks to group two or more words together 
• Phrase searching ensures that the words inside the quotes will be found in your results exactly as you wrote them
• Examples:
      “social media”
      “high school” 

Limiters 

• Limiters can be used to narrow your search results
• Full Text will limit your results to items you can read in full, online
• Peer-Reviewed or Scholarly will limit your results to academic journal articles
• Date limiters can help you narrow your results by publication date

Truncation and Wildcards

• Truncation substitutes a symbol, usually an asterisk (*), for any ending of a root word
• Example:
  econom* = economic, economy, economize, economist, etc.
• Wildcards are symbols, usually a question mark (?), substituted for one character in a word
• Example:
  ma?e = mace, made, male, etc.

Subject Headings and Descriptors

• Subject headings or Descriptors are controlled terms and phrases assigned to articles by reviewers to describe the articles' content
• Search for specific subject headings to descriptors to limit results to articles that are primarily about specific topics or concepts
• Each database has unique subject headings and descriptors; they can usually be found in a thesaurus or help page 

1. Boolean operators
   • AND separates each search box
   • OR separates synonymous or related keywords
2. Phrase searching
   • quotes ensure that the keyword "action research" is searched as a phrase
3. Subject headings
   • The keyword "action research" is searched for in the SU Descriptor field to narrow results to articles tagged with the subject heading "action research"
4. Truncation
   • numer* will return keywords like numeral, numerals, numeracy
   • number* will return keywords like number, numbers
5. Limiters 
   • Search has been limited to full text, peer-reviewed articles, published in the last five years.