SCU RAISE

Place quote marks ” “ around the phrase to ensure only the words in the phrase are searched in the intended order

• Example: “community forest management“
• Example: “coronary disease“

Caution: don’t use full sentences within quote marks, i.e. “the effects of pest disease on banana plantations”

Replace the end of the word with * (or ? depending on the database)

• Example: therap* will retrieve therapy, therapies, therapeutic etc

Caution: don’t use the symbol too early, e.g. photo* will bring back photons, photography and photosynthesis

Use the hashtag # or ? symbol to search for variations of the spelling of a word

• Example: colo#r will retreive either colour or color
• Example: organi?ation will retrieve either organisation or organization

Caution: # only used in the Ebschost database and ? is used in the Proquest database

The Within “W” operator finds terms in the order in which they are entered

• Example: education W5 “special needs”
  Finds the word education within 5 words before “special needs”

The Near “N” operator finds terms nearby in any order

• Example: education N5 “special needs”
  Finds the word education within 5 words before or after “special needs”

Different databases prioritise the order in which they ‘read’ Boolean Operators. It is best to use parentheses i.e. () to structure your search

• Example: depression AND (teenager OR teen OR adolescent OR youth OR “young adult”)

The terms and operations that occur inside the parentheses will be searched first, therefore will find documents that contain one of the words in brackets but only if they also contain the word ‘depression’