Basic Research

This video (1 min) shows how you can find the best databases for your topic or discipline. It uses Kinesiology as an example, but you can follow along and choose any discipline that is relevant for your needs.

Now that you have a basic idea for your topic, it's time to start developing the keywords that you'll use in the databases to find articles. These keywords should be succinct and simple. At this point, you want to break down your topic to the simplest parts. You will combine them to create your searches later. Here is an example of how you can develop keywords from a basic topic idea.

Example topic

How does animal assisted therapy affect social communication in children with autism?

1. Keep It Simple

Because databases search for words that appear in the articles, you could find relevant articles without phrasing your search as a sentence. In fact, your results will be better if you don't phrase it as a sentence. A good search will avoid phrasing the terms in a sentence because all of the terms you use will determine your list of results. Use only those terms that are most useful. Consider the following search terms:

animal assisted therapy children autism

If you were to type those in a database, you would get better results than if you searched:

animal assisted therapy used for children who have autism

because the database will search for the unnecessary words, "used," "for," "who," and "have." Those words are not specific to your topic and are so common that they won't be helpful in refining your search results.

2. Break It Down Into Concepts

Think of the basic components of the topic. These are the terms that will become your main keywords because they describe the most important parts of your topic. For our example, these might be:

• Concept 1
  • animal assisted therapy
• Concept 2
  • social communication
• Concept 3
  • autism

3. Synonyms

The next thing you'll want to do is to think of other words that describe your topic. These are important because some authors will phrase the topic differently from others. Another thing you might experience is that you don't find enough results with your initial terms. Using more terms can help expand your search results. These terms might also give you ideas on how to expand your topic, if necessary.

For our example, let's look at the concept and think of other terms that describe these same ideas.

• Concept 1
  • animal assisted therapy
  • pet therapy
• Concept 2
  • social communication
  • social skills
• Concept 3
  • autism
  • autism spectrum disorders
  • ASD

Now that you have a basic idea for a topic and have started developing your keywords, write three (3) of those terms -- we'll be using those in the next step.

So far, we've only talked about brainstorming and thinking about search terms- but how do we actually use them?