How do you find the most relevant/recent research on your topic and be reasonably confident you haven’t missed any important studies? Create a search strategy, which is a systematic way of locating relevant materials on your topic.
The steps below yield a big payoff in terms of searching efficiently and effectively.
1. Focus your topic: Choose something that interests you! Then identify the question you're trying to answer. For example, does listening to music help patients manage their pain?
2. Select keywords and concepts for your topic. List only terms that are crucial to your topic (primarily nouns) and their synonyms: music, music therapy, background music; pain, illness, pain management, pain perception, etc.
3. Choose appropriate databases: review the descriptions on the database list.
4. Write a search statement (This is what you would type in a database search box): music therapy AND pain management. Usually search terms are nouns. Use the connectors AND, OR, NOT (in all caps) to combine search terms. AND narrows your search, OR broadens it; NOT excludes a term(s).
5. Run your search and evaluate the results. Keep you searches broad when you first start searching.
6. Revise as necessary. If you have too many hits, set (additional) filters/limits; for too few hits use additional synonyms or broader search terms.