Planning
a Database Search
A
database is a catalog
of publication information about periodical articles (and sometimes
books) that can be searched usually by subject, author, or title.
Some contain summaries of each article, and some provide the full-text
of all or some articles.
Imagine
that you are beginning research on the following question:
The
following are the steps you would follow in creating a database
search strategy. First,
identify the concepts in your research question, which are marijuana,
legalized, and medical.
Second,
create a list of keywords, synonyms for the concepts in your research
question and possibly abbreviations and alternate spellings for
the concepts.These will be your search terms. New try your hand
at creating one or more keywords for each concept.
Check
your list against the one below.
marijuana |
marihuana,
cannabis, hashish |
legalized |
decriminalized |
medical |
therapeutic |
Now
you are ready for the third step,
choosing a database.
