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Research Guides@Tufts

PSY 0032: Experimental Psychology

This guide is designed to support students in Psychology 32: Experimental Psychology

Keywords

Keywords are the building blocks of our searches.

The term "keywords" can also refer the core elements of your project - the important ideas, dates, places, figures, and theories that make up your argument and its context. These elements make excellent places to start with your search terms!

Making a list of search terms and keeping track of which ones you try can be a helpful way to keep track of your research in the beginning stages. Note: this list can also help you recreate your searches if you lose a source. When searching, it's often also helpful to think of the process like focusing an image -- you need to zoom in and out to find clarity. Don't be afraid to come up with related terms that are both more broad and more focused than your initial list.

The video below from Utah State University Library breaks down this process of developing search term keywords from project keywords in more detail and with visual aids.

Tips to Optimize Your Results

Limit or Expand Your Search: AND/OR/NOT (aka Boolean Search Operators)

AND

Use AND to focus search and combine different aspects of your topic.

Example: global warming AND agriculture

OR

Use OR to expand your search and find synonyms or related terms.

Example: global warming OR greenhouse effect

NOT

Use NOT to exclude a word or phrase from your search.

Example: hurricanes NOT North Carolina

Additional Search Tips

Phrase search  - Use quotation marks" " to search for a particular phrase.

Example:  "American sign language culture" holds the words together. Otherwise you risk finding books with sign as a word in the title, published by the American Popular Culture Association.

Truncation * - Use an asterisk to find variations of a word. Add an asterisk to the root of the word to find all variations of that word, including singular and plural.

Example: sex* finds sex, sexes, sexuality, etc.

Grouping/Nesting Keywords - Use parentheses ( ) to group all your search terms together.

Example:  ("self concept" or "body image") and "cerebral palsy"

Citation Chaining/Mining/Searching

In addition to searching in JumboSearch and in different databases on your own, another search strategy for finding resources utilizes the information that you gather through that searching. Nearly all scholarly sources, and many other reputable sources of information, will include Works Cited, Reference, or Bibliography pages (some will also include footnotes or endnotes). These are treasure troves of likely relevant resources to your topic. This method of searching, often referred to as citation chaining or citation mining, can also be useful for figuring out the prominent scholars in a particular field. Dissertations and theses can be excellent resources for citation mining because their bibliographies tend to be very thorough.

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