identifying key words

The first step in developing a search strategy is to analyse the question to determine the keywords or phrases. These are the terms which describe the topic or subject of your search as briefly and accurately as possible. Descriptions made up of one or two words are ideal. These content words or keywords will be used as search terms.

Example:
Discuss the health effects of mobile phones on teenagers.

In this example there are two sets of keywords, i.e. health and mobile phones.

Don't forget to check a thesaurus for synonyms, words with similar meanings. These may also be useful in your search.

As well as keywords, a question may contain direction words which tell you how to deal with the topic, e.g. analyse, discuss, compare, describe, evaluate, etc. These words would rarely be used as search terms, but should be kept in mind when you are browsing the results list to determine which items are relevant to your topic.

Example:
Discuss the health effects of mobile phones on teenagers.

In this instance the direction word is discuss.

Limit words provide boundaries for your search. Depending on what they are, limit words may or may not be used as search terms. For instance, limit words may be:

• geographical, e.g. your local area, Australia, Europe, etc.;
• specific to a time period, e.g. in the year 2000, since 1980, for the past 10 years, etc.;
• specific to a certain age group, e.g. children, elderly, etc.;
• numerical, e.g. discuss two perspectives;
• prioritised, e.g. determine the most important issue.

Practical limit words may be used as search terms to limit the results of a keyword search. For instance, a keyword search may be limited by the name of a country, the date of publication or an age group.

Less descriptive terms, such as 'important' or 'two perspectives', would not be used as search terms. They would, however, be kept in mind when selecting appropriate items from the results of the search.

Example:
Discuss the health effects of mobile phones on teenagers.

The limiting word is teenagers, which limits this topic to a particular age group.

For more information visit the Topic Analysis online tutorial via Web-ezy.