BC3148 & BC3139: Integrated Human Biology

How do you find the most relevant and/or 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. The steps below yield a big payoff in terms of searching efficiently and effectively.

1. Focus your topic: What is the question you're trying to answer? For example, does soda pop consumption affect body weight?

2. Select keywords and concepts for your topic. List only terms that are crucial to your topic (primarily nouns) and their synonyms: soda pop, soft drinks, heaviness, body weight

3. Choose appropriate databases.

4. Write a search statement (This is what you would type in a database search box): carbonated beverages AND body weight

5.  Run your search and evaluate the results.

6. Revise as necessary. If you have too many hits, set (additional) limits; for too few hits use additional synonyms or broader search terms.

Connecting your search terms so that a database understands your intention (so to speak) is really important to finding what you're looking for; watch this video to learn or refresh your memory about the functions of those pesky Boolean operators, AND, OR and NOT.

Produced by the University Libraries at McMaster University, Hamilton, Nov. 28, 2016; reused under Creative Commons Attribution Licensing.