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HCAD 3370 Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Search Strategies - Keywords and Subjects

BOOLEAN OPERATORS 

The three words that you can use to combine your search keywords most efficiently are: and, or, and not. 

  • AND can be symbolized by the plus sign (+). It will find results that contain two or more specified keywords. AND tends to narrow searches and show less results.
    • Example: coffee AND beans
  • OR will find results that contain either keyword. OR tends to broaden searches and show more search results.
    • Example: party OR celebration
  • NOT selectively eliminates any results containing the second keyword.
    • Example: royal NOT Caribbean

This image contains a graphic depicting boolean search operators and modifiers with examples summarized in the text above and below.

BOOLEAN MODIFIERS

Three symbols you can also use to further refine your search keywords are "quotation marks," (parentheses), and the asterisk *.

"Quotation marks" searches for groups of words together. This works best if you are looking for a title or phrase.

Example: "remote work"

(Parentheses) can be used in some databases or library resources to group words instead, or in cases of complex searches, to tell the search engine which elements to process first.

Example: roses AND (red OR white)

The asterisk * is usually found above the number eight on most keyboards. Use the asterisk * to abbreviate words so you can find all possible spelling variations in your search results. It will also make your search results increase, typically.

Example: educ*

Results - education, educational, etc.

Keyword Searching for Research Method

You can use a keyword to help you find sources by their research method! This will save you time that you might otherwise spend skimming entire articles looking for the research method.

Subject headings are specific terms that are linked to articles in databases and function at times like tags or categories. In library jargon terms, they are also described as controlled vocabulary. You can find subject headings in databases typically in the article display, or search in the CINAHL Headings. You can combine subject headings using CINAHL Headings using the same connecting words.

This image shows an article entry in CINAHL focusing on the Major and Minor subjects assigned to the article.

CINAHL and MeSH subject headings are similar but not the same!

  • Medical Subject Headings or MeSH, which is the National Library of Medicine's (PubMed, Medline) controlled vocabulary thesaurus. Each article in PubMed or Medline is associated with a set of MeSH terms that are assigned to describe the content of an article.
     
  • CINAHL Subject Headings are based on MeSH (though are not identical) and native to the CINAHL database. Each article in the database is associated with a set of CINAHL subject terms that are assigned to describe the content of an article.