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Search Strategy Building Tools: Home

Moving from a Topic to an effective Search Strategy involves Narrowing a Topic, breaking it down into its Core Concepts, and then constructing an effective Search Strategy using Boolean operators, nesting, truncation, and phrase searching. The tools on this page will help you do this.

Search Strategy Builder

Search Strategy Builder

The Search Strategy Builder is a tool designed to teach you how to create a search string using Boolean logic. While it is not a database and is not designed to input a search, you should be able to cut and paste the results into most databases’ search boxes.

  Concept 1 AND Concept 2 AND Concept 3
Name your core concepts here    
Search terms Search terms Search terms

List alternate terms for each concept.

These can be synonyms, or they can be specific examples of the concept.

You can use single words, or phrases with quotation marks,
or truncated words with the *

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

OR

Now copy and paste the above Search Strategy into a database search box.

This Search Strategy Builder code was developed by the University of Arizona Libraries (CCBY-NC-SA 3.0 US). Any reuse should give them proper credit.

Moving from a Topic to a Search Strategy

Moving from a Topic to an effective Search Strategy involves Narrowing a Topic, breaking it down into its Core Concepts, and then constructing an effective Search Strategy using Boolean operators, nesting, truncation, and phrase searching.  Here's an example:

Now, we can copy and paste this Search Strategy into a search field:

“united states” AND (opinion OR “public opinion” OR attitudes OR beliefs) AND (immigra* OR “illegal immigra*” OR “illegal aliens”)

 

Creative Commons License
"Moving from a Research Question to a Search Strategy" model and worksheet by Mandy Swygart-Hobaugh is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Research Question to Search Strategy Worksheet

Here is a blank worksheet that you can use to break down your Research Question into its Core Concepts and then construct an effective Search Strategy using Boolean operators, nesting, truncation, and phrase searching.