Structured search

The starting point for a structured search is your research question/problem statement, which should delimit and clarify the area you want to work with. Once you have your question ready, break it down into searchable terms. Identify the most meaningful words and think about your search strategies. Things you need to keep in mind are:

• What synonyms or related terms are there for each word? You may need many variants so let your thoughts flow.
  
  
• Spelling can vary depending on whether it is British or American English. Use the masking search technique.
  
  
• You may need to use the words in both singular and plural, so work with truncation and different inflectional forms.

Feel free to make a table where the different synonyms are visible and where you can also note your search results. You do one synonym search at a time, and then merge the search strings through your search history.

The image below presents a structured search that contains four different search blocks with synonymous words (#1-#4). The four search blocks are then searched together (#5). The hit list is delimited (#5) and refined using subject terms(#6).