Brainstorm keywords that represent the main concept(s) of your topic. Think about what words you would want to see in an article that may indicate it would be useful for your research.
Topic: | credit card debt among American college students | ||
Key concepts: | credit card debt | American | college students |
Related keywords: | personal finance | United States | undergrad |
consumer debt | USA | young adults |
Need more help? Try the Keyword Generator from California State University, Fullerton. It walks you through the process of finding keywords relevant to your topic.
Combine the keywords you brainstormed into a search strategy. Put phrases in quotation marks and/or use AND, OR, NOT (Boolean operators) to get more precise results.
Broad Search
Search for information using the single most important term related to your topic.
Narrow Search
Search for information by combining keywords you brainstormed.
Too many irrelevant results?
Add more keywords.
Too few relevant results?
Remove or change keywords
Adapted from: UT Arlington Library
Good research usually involves using a variety of information sources.