Searching for Psychology Literature

Getting Started

Lisa Demczuk, University of Manitoba Libraries

Research question to search strategy

Research question / topic

Concepts

Keywords

What are the main concepts or ideas in your topic?

What is your topic or question?

What keywords will you use to search?

Research question to search strategy

What is the relationship between
self-esteem and social media use in adolescents?

self-esteem
social media
adolescents, teenagers, youth

concepts

topic or question

keywords 

self-esteem, social media use, adolescents

Boolean operators

AND, OR, NOT

 instagram OR twitter

instagram AND twitter

instagram NOT twitter

Search using keywords

More tools

self-esteem AND "social media" AND (adolescen* OR teen* OR youth*)

Truncation: use * (asterisk) on root word for different endings

Phrase searching: use " " (quotation marks) for phrases

Parentheses: use (  ) to enclose search terms that must be searched together

• refine topic or research question

• think of keywords to use in search

• choose appropriate boolean operators and other tools

• search and review results

• revise search with other keywords, subject headings

• look at references and Cited By for more articles

• select articles

Research Cycle