If you have a topic you would like to explore, you will want to develop keywords to search in OneSearch. Keywords are the main ideas of your research topic.
Tips on Keywords:
- Use main ideas + concepts
- Eliminate words without meaning in your research question
- Focus on the answers to WHAT, WHO, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and HOW question words in your research question
- Your research question doesn't need to include all six of these question words
Research Topic Example:
I want to find articles on the following research topic: The impact of divorce in the stress level of children in the United States
For my topic, I need to look at who I'm talking about? What is important? And, where does this happen?
My keywords are: WHO: children of divorce; WHAT: stress; WHERE: United States
Note: We can put children of divorce and United States in quotation marks to search them as phrases and we can combine the terms with the AND Boolean operator to search for them together.
Example Search in the OneSearch Database:
- Visit the library webpage, find OneSearch, and click on the search to go to the basic search page. You can also use the same search box on the library homepage to type in your search term(s) or keyword(s) and click search. Click here to go directly to the page below.
- Enter your keyword(s) in the search box; in my example, children of divorce, stress, and United States. Use AND to connect these ideas and find them together. Use quotation marks around children of divorce and United States to look for them as phrases. From the drop-down menu, you can select articles in databases to look for articles. Click here to go directly to the page below.
- Before you open any of the library databases or e-books from off-campus, you will be prompted to log in, so prior to initiating your search, you can log in to OneSeach with your Canvas credentials on the GCC Portal Login page. When you are logged in, you have full access to all resources and database features.
- Below is your results page. It consists of different types of articles. You can refine your search results by date to get the ones published in the last five years. There are many other options to filter your results at the "Refine my results" menu on the left side of the page that you can use. Click here to go directly to the page below.
- Review the sources and determine which ones are more relevant to your research topic. To access the full-text of any of the articles you can click on Available online and select any of the databases that contain the full-text to access it. You can also use the database features to print, cite, save, or email the article
6. Below is the article in the Academic Search Complete database.