Literature Searching Method
- Submitted by: ntxlt6
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- Category: Other
- Date Submitted: 10/20/2013 02:23 AM
- Pages: 7
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Introduction
Compared with the traditional and the retrieved printed journal methods, electronic databases allow researchers or students to get information quickly, up-to-date, and wider ranges of options. The aim of this essay is to explain some methods used in search presentation article on that time, including how to use the truncating key terms way and Boolean operators to choose key words. Meanwhile, the essay will critically analyse and evaluate the searching techniques used to find the related articles from databases and other sources this time, and exploring how to improve better in the future.
Main body
* Describe and Justify the Searching Methods
During the process of search presentation article, the first step is to decide the topic, and then according to the topic, to select the key terms for exploring the academic article. For the obesity presentation topic by quantitative research studies, the key terms are “quantitative” and “obes*”, the “obes*” can be obese and obesity, instead of one word. Therefore, through using wildcard (*) to truncate words, a series of words related to it, like the verb, the noun, the adjective, the adverb…they are all can show in the results. This approach can retrieve more relevant articles, rather than limitation one key term. In addition, the Boolean operators is useful way to search the required data, it contains words “AND”, “OR”, “NOT” to narrow down or broaden out the research outcomes (Jesson, Matheson and Lacey, 2011). There has another effective skill is to identify synonyms and alternative key terms and combine with the Boolean operators. That is, the alternative key term of obesity is overweight. So, the core words can put the “quantitative AND obes* OR overweight”.
Not only by above methods, through setting limited elements to refine and restrain the irrelevant articles in databases is a meaningful process. Those factors include date, language, geographical region, subject, type of source (Bhandol,...
Compared with the traditional and the retrieved printed journal methods, electronic databases allow researchers or students to get information quickly, up-to-date, and wider ranges of options. The aim of this essay is to explain some methods used in search presentation article on that time, including how to use the truncating key terms way and Boolean operators to choose key words. Meanwhile, the essay will critically analyse and evaluate the searching techniques used to find the related articles from databases and other sources this time, and exploring how to improve better in the future.
Main body
* Describe and Justify the Searching Methods
During the process of search presentation article, the first step is to decide the topic, and then according to the topic, to select the key terms for exploring the academic article. For the obesity presentation topic by quantitative research studies, the key terms are “quantitative” and “obes*”, the “obes*” can be obese and obesity, instead of one word. Therefore, through using wildcard (*) to truncate words, a series of words related to it, like the verb, the noun, the adjective, the adverb…they are all can show in the results. This approach can retrieve more relevant articles, rather than limitation one key term. In addition, the Boolean operators is useful way to search the required data, it contains words “AND”, “OR”, “NOT” to narrow down or broaden out the research outcomes (Jesson, Matheson and Lacey, 2011). There has another effective skill is to identify synonyms and alternative key terms and combine with the Boolean operators. That is, the alternative key term of obesity is overweight. So, the core words can put the “quantitative AND obes* OR overweight”.
Not only by above methods, through setting limited elements to refine and restrain the irrelevant articles in databases is a meaningful process. Those factors include date, language, geographical region, subject, type of source (Bhandol,...