Dr. Rath's Search Term Generator
1
Start with your research question
What makes a good question?
- Specific and able to be researched
- Does not have a yes/no answer
- Only has 2 or 3 main parts
- Usually starts with how, why, or what
- Example: "How does social media use affect college students' sleep?"
2
Identify key concepts
How to pick keywords
- Look for central nouns or ideas from your question
- Pick 2–4 main concepts
- Example from our question: "college students", "social media", and "sleep"
Concept 1
Concept 2
3
Add synonyms & related terms
Tips for finding synonyms
- Use a thesaurus, Google, generative AI, or your brain to make a list
- Include alternate spellings and broader/narrower terms
- Spell out acronyms completely
- Example synonyms for "college students": undergraduates, university students, post-secondary students
- Example synonyms for "social media": Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Yikyak, mesaging, apps, applications
- Example synonyms for "sleep": rest, sleeping, tired, night
4
Review & search
Boolean basics
Boolean is a way of combining your search terms. For a database, AND and OR have specific meanings.
- OR means ANY and connects synonyms: (A OR B)
- AND means BOTH and connects concepts: (A) AND (B)
- Use quotes for keywords that are more than one word: "social media"
- Use a * to truncate a word and find multiple endings: adolescen* (finds adolescent, adolescence, adolescents)
Search summary
Your Boolean search
You can edit these terms using the text-box below:
Search library databases
Click a button below to run the search above in a specific database or set of databases.
When you're done, please come back here and scroll down to take a brief survey on how well this tool worked.
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