1. Literature Searching Plan your search
To carry out a lit review, you first need to search for relevant literature
Plan your search

2. 4 steps to finding literature1.
Identify keywords 2.
Decide where
to search 3.
Search 4.
Review results
It’s a circular process as when you see results may change your original search
Breaking down research question into concepts and identifying useful keywords.
Developing a good search strategy

3. Devising a Search Strategy
Why use a search strategy?
Keeps you in control
Allows you to piece together more relevant results
Allows you to search the same way in many sources – consistency
Helps you to keep track of your searches
Saves you time
Key tasks are to plan what you do and record what you do
‘Keeps you in control’ means of process, but this in turn helps control anxiety
‘Allows you to piece..’ by refining how you search
‘Allows you to search…’ to help you avoid missing relevant results
‘Helps you to keep track…’ and ‘saves you time’ – in one searching session you probably won’t even finish searching one database, so it’s vital that you know exactly where you’re up to in your search. Record manually and use ‘save search’ facility where available.

4. Consider your topic
Define what you are looking for – this could be a statement or a question
Example: What effects does the use of social media have on adolescent mental health?
Aim for a core statement or question that expresses what the research will address. (Parameters such as place, population, date range can be added as the research progresses)

5. Task 1
Write down the topic that you will be researching

6. Identify concepts and keywords - tips
Identify the subject areas of your topic:
Example: psychology, sociology, criminology, youth studies, health
Think about the different aspects you are interested in:
Example: geographic aspect could be North East or social aspects could cover anti-social behaviour or unemployment etc.

7. Anti-social behaviour
Criminal behaviour
Crime
Drugs
Teenagers
Youths
Anti-social behaviour
Think creatively
Social media
Youths
instagram
Teenagers
Mental health
You want to find as much information as possible on What effects does the use of social media have on adolescent mental health?
Self-esteem
Depression

8. Task 2
Think of all the different aspects and alternative words that describe your topic

9. Organising keywords Split your topic into its key concepts
For each key concept think of alternative keywords or phrases to describe that concept and put them into an order
Your dissertation topic may be more complex than our example. You may need to do separate searches for each aspect.
Social Media
Mental health
Teenagers
Facebook
Depression
Youth
Instagram
Anxiety
Young people
If you are in the school of health, they may have been asked to use PIO / PICO / PEO formula to group their keywords/components – it is the same principle as what we are going to discuss now (an also add S= setting and M = methodology (quantitative or qualitative)
This will be important when you come to search in the databases

10. Task 3
Identify and organise your keywords

11. Where to search? 1. 4. Identify keywords Review results 2.
Decide where
to search 3.
Search 4.
Review results
This is the basic model of the steps to finding information – starts with a need for information and identifying those keywords or phrases that you would find in an article or webpage on the topic.
Next step is to decide where to search – this will depend on the kind of information you want eg background, very up to date and the most likely place your information would have been published
Actually carry out a search on the topic using the identified resources and keywords and then evaluate the results – from this you will probably need to adapt your search with different keywords, different sources etc.

12. Search engines employ sophisticated personalization engines that can occasionally Search engines employ sophisticated personalization engines that can occasionally provide dramatically inconsistent views of the Web to different users.
Filter bubbles
Search engines use sophisticated personalization features that can sometimes provide inconsistent views of the Web to different users.
Cyberbalkanization - refers to the idea of segregation of the Internet into small political groups with similar perspectives to a degree that they show a narrow-minded approach to those with contradictory views.

13. Task
Search for ‘fake news and Facebook’. Compare your results with a colleague. Are there any differences?

14. LibGuide http://libguides.tees.ac.uk/psychology
Different pages on guide – e.g finding journal articles and how to reference page

15. Discovery: the Library’s rich resources in one place
Single search
Find books, journal articles, newspapers and other resources
Scholarly resources which you need for your dissertation

16. Online Databases
You can carry out more precise /focussed searches on online databases than on Discovery
There are many different online databases
There is no need to be an expert on them all
Many have similar features
Use the online databases that are relevant to your subject area
e.g. PsycINFO contains journal articles on the subjects of psychology, psychiatry, physiology and sociology
Some allow you to set up an account to save your searches
What is an online database?
Subscription based
Nothing exists that covers all subject areas, although there are a few that try – Scopus, WoK
Most are subject specific, e.g. Health, Scientific
Really need to search more than one database to get good coverage
Buttons to show links to factsheets & tutorials and access information

17. Choose online databases
Use the database descriptions to decide which databases to include in your search
Be aware that:
Some only provide abstracts (summaries)
Some may only index journal articles but many include other sources such as conference papers and reports
If you need historical research some databases only cover certain years

18. Searching the Sources 1. 4. Identify keywords Review results 2.
Decide where
to search 3.
Search 4.
Review results
Building up your search effectively involves:
Boolean searching, using AND, OR
Truncation / Wildcards
Phrase searching
Searching in the best field

19. OR teenagers OR youth Broaden Search
Using OR broadens your search by allowing you to search for more than one term at a time.
Usually used when you want to search for very similar concepts, or synonyms:
TEENAGERS OR YOUTH
CRIME OR ASBO
DRUG OR ILLEGAL SUBSTANCE
The more terms you join with ‘OR’ the more results you get
teenagers OR youth

20. Social Media AND Mental Health
Narrow Search AND
Mental Health
Social Media
Social Media AND Mental Health

21. Teenagers OR Young people OR Adolescents
Search 1
Depression OR Anxiety
Search 2
Teenagers OR Young people OR Adolescents
Search 3
Social media OR Facebook OR Instagram
Search 4
results of searches 1 AND 2 AND 3
Search 1
Anxiety AND young people
Search 2
Anxiety AND young people AND social media
Search 3
Anxiety AND young people AND (social media OR Facebook OR Instagram) 
Different databases allow you to enter your searches in different ways.:
1st example: Some databases (EBSCO) allow you to combine the results of searches so you can search all the keywords for each concept with OR and then combine these results with AND.
2nd example: If this is not possible then you may need to input your terms in a different format.
Make a general plan and then you can amend according to the databases you use.

22. Advanced Search Techniques
Truncation
depress*
Wildcards
behavio#r
wom?n
Phrase Searching
“social media”
Searching by Field
e.g. by author,
keyword, title

23. Task 4
Apply advanced search techniques to your search strategy

24. Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Type of research (Qualitative, quantitative, randomised control trial….)
Geographical location
Historical time period
Context –school, home, friendship groups etc.

25. Task 5
Identify any inclusion or exclusion criteria that might be appropriate for your research
After this task, we’re now ready to search the databases

26. Set up an account Many databases allow you to save your searches
You can re-run searches at a later date when new articles may have been published
Many databases allow you to set up a personal account so that you can save searches and re-run them later.
Note the logins and passwords that you set up today (if they are your ICT username and password be aware that your university password may change in the future but the password for the databases will stay the same)

27. Examine your results closely
Relevant record
Author
Written other similar papers?
References
Previous research to read
Keywords
Lead to other records on the subject
Citings?
Research which has quoted this paper
Publication
Browse other issues of journals?
It’s easy to get the impression that literature searching is a totally rigid, structured process: you devise your search strategy then apply it to each of your information sources in turn gathering references as you go.
In practice it’s often more fluid and organic than that. One useful approach is to use a really relevant result that you’ve already found and examine it closely, chasing up links as shown in this slide.