Social Work

The Information Landscape

Search Strategies using a subject search which will reveal keywords.

Search Documentation

Save and Share Searches

Citation Management: Zotero (Write & Cite) 

Most of the information required for academic work lives in the Deep Web

Effective and Efficient Searching Requires a Strategy: Keywords and Subjects

When you search by keyword in a database:

• you are searching for words and phrases that can be found anywhere in the text of the item record and/or article.
• you are not searching for commonly used words parts of speech. Examples include articles, pronouns, and prepositions. Databases do not index commonly used words, which are called stop words. Examples of stop words in databases are: a, an, about, after, all, also, and, any, are, as, at, based, because, been, between, and many more.

Searching by keyword can be a flexible way to find a large number of results. You can use keyword searching as a way to find targeted results: slang, jargon, and new terms work well in keyword searches.

When you search by subject, you are using a term from a pre-defined controlled vocabulary determined by that database. Many databases feature a subject-specific thesaurus of subject terms that relate back to the contents in that database. You will only receive articles that were assigned the subject heading you searched with. For this reason, articles found via subject heading searches can be very reliable. The subject will appear in the record item's subject heading or descriptor field.

Searching by subject can be a very specific way to find targeted results within a specific discipline or research area. This can be very beneficial to your research; however, searching by subject only works if you know which subject terms to search with.

In this exercise, we will build a subject search in SocINDEX for 2 concepts: minority older people AND social services.

In this database, subjects are called 'Descriptors', represented as DE.

Concept 1: Minority Older People

The Sociology Thesaurus index includes older people and provides a definition.

Unselect the Explode option.

Review the index for more specific terms

Select your preferred terms and add them to the search using the Boolean Operator, OR.

Concept 2: Social Services

Unselect the Explode option.

Review the index for more specific terms. For the purpose of this example, we will not specify the type of social services.

Add the term to the search using the Boolean Operator, AND. 

Search.

The search has over 11,000 results. A good set is @50. 

Add filters.

Select Surveys and United States and Apply to the search

This yields 30 results, a manageable number of relevant articles.

The subject search identified keywords in a manageable and relevant result set.

Browse the abstracts to learn more about the subject and to record the keywords found in the title and/or abstract. 

Now that you've learned something about the landscape of minority older adults and social services, you can explore more information 

• Modify the search by adding keywords. 
• Change the filters

Select Advanced Search to return to the main search.

Drop Social Services and add OR Hispanic Americans

Add back in DE " Social Services" with an AND

Enable discovery: Use a reporting standard

As with all research, the value of literature reviews depends on what was done, what was found, and the clarity of reporting. As with other publications, the reporting quality of reviews varies. If not reported precisely, readers may not be able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of those reviews. Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic reviews and Meta-Analys (PRISMA) was created to addresses the suboptimal reporting of the most authoritative review type, meta-analyses and other studies that evaluate the effects of health interventions, irrespective of the design of the included studies and can be used for social or educational interventions. 

Page M J, McKenzie J E, Bossuyt P M, Boutron I, Hoffmann T C, Mulrow C D et al. The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews BMJ 2021; 372 :n71 doi:10.1136/bmj.n71

PRISMA for Searching (PRISMA-Search)
The PRISMA extension for searching was published in 2021 and established a standard for literature search reporting. The checklist includes 16 items, each of which is detailed with exemplar reporting and rationale.

Create database accounts to store searches and results and share citations.

Use Zotero to generate accurate citations and quick bibliographies. Get started with these videos:

• Manage Citations: Zotero How To Videos (Beginners guide to Zotero in 6 brief videos)

Do you need a specialized citation style beyond APA, Chicago, or MLA? Check out Zotero's Style Repository for specialized formats.

The Libraries provide workshops to get you started using Zotero. Check the workshop calendar for times and locations.

Need more citation help? Check out the Purdue Online Writing Lab for assistance with citing APA, MLA and Chicago.