Controversial Issues: Keyword Searching/Search Strategy

State Your Topic as a Question

• For example, if you are interested in finding out about use of alcoholic beverages by college students, you might pose the question, "What effect does use of alcoholic beverages have on the health of college students?"
• Identify the main concepts or keywords in your question. In this case they are alcoholic beverages,health, and college students.

​​Too much information? 

• If you are finding too many sources, narrow your topic by using the "and" operator.

For example: beer and health and college students

Too little information?

• This may indicate that you need to broaden your topic. Broaden your topic by linking synonyms with the "or" operator. Look for information on students, rather than college students.

For example:  alcoholic beverages or beer or wine or liquor. Using truncation with search terms also broadens the search and increases the number of items you find.