Booleans:
- AND: Combines terms and limits search results.
Example: (Older adults AND pneumonia) will search for articles which contain both terms, thus limiting the search results.
- OR: Chooses either term and expands search results.
Example: (Older adults OR elderly) will search for articles with either terms, thus expanding the search results.
- NOT: Eliminates a term and limits search results.
Example: (Older adults NOT adolescents) will produce search results that have eliminated any articles that contain that term.
Truncation:
- Commonly used as an asterisk (*) and applied after the root of a word will search for all version of that word.
- Example: Child* will search for the terms: Child, children, childlike, childless, etc.
Parentheses:
- Use parentheses to nest query terms within other query terms.
- You can enclose search terms and their operators in parentheses to specify the order in which they are interpreted. Information within parentheses is read first, then information outside parentheses is read next.
- Example: (Older adults OR elderly) AND pneumonia
Quotation marks:
- Use quotation marks to keep terms together, such as in a phrase. This will eliminate separate searches for individual terms in a phrase.
- Example: "length of stay" will search this phrase and only produce results with this phrasing.
Limiters:
- Typically located on the left side of a database, limiters can help to eliminate or reduce unwanted results.
- Common limiters include: Peer reviewed, date, type of resource
Synonyms:
- Synonyms can expand your search results.
- Just as different people have different terms for common objects, authors may refer to their topic with different terms
- Example: Older adults may be referred to as elderly or geriatric in various articles.
- You can expand your search terms by reviewing the "Keywords" or "Search terms" identified in various articles which match your research.
- The Boolean OR is used between synonyms. The database will then produce results which contain any or the terms.
