When searching in databases, use keywords that capture the essential ideas of your research topic. Narrowing down your topic into specific key concepts will help retrieve relevant sources. Here are some keywords tips:
- A search like 'The impact of gender on people's salary' will retrieve fewer results because the database will look at all the words as separate concepts. Instead, break your topics into the key concepts: gender AND salary
- Brainstorm keywords with similar meanings to concepts. For example, salary could also be wages, page, income, or earnings.
- Search for all of these terms together separated by OR. For example, pay OR wages OR income OR earnings tells the database to find all of these terms in your search results.
- Please note: using AND between keywords limits or narrows your search while using OR expands or broadens your search. Using NOT also limits or narrows your search
