Licensed Vocational Nursing

While your searches for reference information will likely be more simple, when searching for articles, you will need to use at least 2-4 terms. Using one term will typically provide too many results, while using an entire statement or question may yield few or no results. The databases search for the specific words you include in your search, so what you type does matter. Also consider that not all authors use the same language to describe similar topics, so you will need to try a variety of searches.

• Create a list of possible words that could appear in a book or article related to your topic.
• Come up with synonyms or related terms for those.
• Stick to using 2-4 words when searching.

When looking for scholarly literature related to the health sciences, it can be helpful to include some of the following to narrow your search results:

• a particular population (i.e., young adults)
• intervention / treatment or issue of interest (i.e., nicotine patch)
• health outcome (i.e., smoking cessation)

"How Library Stuff Works: How to Choose Keywords" (2:42) by McMaster Libraries is licensed under CC BY 3.0

To find a phrase, use quotation marks around it.

• “allergy-induced asthma”
• “postpartum depression" 
• "eating disorders"

Boolean operators are single-word commands that tell databases how to search for your terms.

• Using AND between two terms tells the database to search for results that contain both terms.
  • asthma AND children
• Using OR between two terms tells the database to search for results that contain either term.
  • anorexia OR bulimia
• You can also leverage using both AND and OR together.
  • If you have one search box, set it up like this: adolescents AND (anorexia OR bulimia)
  • If you have multiple search boxes, set it up like this:
    • first box: adolescents
    • second box: anorexia OR bulimia

• Find word variations using truncation.
• The asterisk * is the most common truncation symbol.
  • child* = child, children, childhood, etc.
• You do have to be careful with truncation. Sometimes you might get unexpected results.
  • tech* = tech, technology, technologies, technical, technically, technician, etc.

Let's put these strategies together. Imagine that you are researching interventions that school nurses can use to help elementary school students who have asthma.

Pull Keywords from Your Research Question

• Issue: asthma 
• Population: elementary school students

Sample Searches to Try

• intervention* AND "school nurse*" AND asthma
• management AND "school nurse*" AND asthma
• ("elementary school" OR "primary school") AND asthma AND nurse*