Skip to Main Content

Evidence Based Practice (EBP)

Search Tips

 

The most commonly used punctuation in search strings are:

 

  • round brackets ( ) used around synonyms with the Boolean OR, e.g. (clean OR green)

 

  • quotation marks / inverted commas " " used to indicate a phrase, as opposed to separate keywords. Phrase searching helps you find exact words in the exact order

e.g.
searching for blood pressure - without quotes - might find results with just "blood" or just "pressure". But searching for "blood pressure" - with quotes - finds only those results with the exact phrase "blood pressure"

 

  • truncation symbol * used to instruct the search engine or database to search for all words beginning with the letters before the symbol, e.g. commun* to find communal, community, communities, communicate, communicable...

Please note that not all databases accept the truncation symbol. You will need to test to see what works best in each database
 

Updated Search String Builder

Search Statement/String Builder

Build effective search queries from your research question

 
1
Enter Your Research Question

Start by clearly defining your research problem or question.

2
Add Your Key Terms

Identify the main concepts from your research question.

Your Research Question: ""
Key Term 1:
Key Term 2:
Key Term 3 (Optional):
3
Add Synonyms and Related Terms

For each key term, add synonyms or related terms.

4
Review and Generate Your Search String

Review your terms and generated search string. Copy the search string to use in academic databases.

Your Generated Search String:

 

 

Based on coding by Claude.ai and the interactive guide by the University of Western Australia Library at https://guides.library.uwa.edu.au/compose_search/try_it under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.

Test your knowledge of searching