SWK 3140 - Social Work with Groups

Be Creative with Search Terms

The first term you think of may not be the best one. There are other words or phrases you can search with to find material on that topic. We call these keywords. Think creatively to brainstorm alternatives!

Sample Topic: Group Therapy for kids struggling with the loss of a family member.

Step 1 - Identify the main ideas - Group Therapy for kids struggling with the loss of a family member

Step 2 - Brainstorm Broader, Related and Narrower Terms. Consider the language that an expert would use.

Found too many results?

Add more keywords.

Adding additional keywords to your search can help to further narrow your topic.

Example: college AND first-generation students AND academic performance

Use a filter

Look on the left side for ways you can filter your materials. Here are a few to consider, depending on your needs.

• material type - such as a book, newspaper article, or review
• peer-reviewed - to find scholarly articles
• date - typically to find the most current materials
• subject - to find articles about a certain topic

Found too few results?

Try different search terms.

What other words could you use to describe this concept? Brainstorm related terms, synonyms, and slightly different forms of your word or phrase. Also brainstorm broader categories or concepts it belongs to, as well as narrower elements or examples. 

It may also be useful to consider the official, academic, or formal way to write that term. This is more likely to be used in academic writing.

Use fewer search terms.

Sometimes less is more! The more words, phrases, or subjects you ask the database to find, the fewer sources will meet the criteria.

Use OR.

Broaden your search by using the boolean operator OR to link your terms.

Example: (college OR higher education OR university) AND first-generation students AND (academic performance OR student success)

Still not working? Learn more about search methods or ask a librarian for personalized help.

Citation Chasing and "Cited By" Searching

Finding one article on your topic can often lead to a lot more! Browse the references of the article to find sources cited in their literature review. The authors are likely experts on the topic and have already done the searching for you! 

Some tools can also help you find sources that have cited the one you are reading since it was published. By nature, these will be more recent!

There is often a feature built into library databases that provides a linked list of references. In Spartan Search, click the red arrows next to the article's title to find the article's References (the downward-facing arrow), and articles that have cited this title (the upward-facing arrow).

Don't see that option? You can manually copy that title into Spartan Search, ideally in quotation marks, to look for the full text. If you don't find your article, you can try searching on Google Scholar to see if there is a free copy available. Free copies are linked to the right of the article title.

Still can't find it? Create a request in your TIPASA Interlibrary Loan Account.

Boolean Operators

Use the Boolean Operators AND, OR and NOT to create search statements to enter in databases, Spartan Search, Google, etc.

Examples:

• College AND Technology AND Learning
• (College OR Higher Education OR University) AND (Technology OR Computers) AND (Learning OR Instruction)
• (Technology AND Learning AND Elementary ) NOT College

Wildcards

Wildcards allows you to search for multiple terms with the same root at once by using an asterisk. 

Examples:

• Educat* = Educate, Education, Educational, Educator
• Child* = Child, Children, Childish

Phrase Searching

Search for exact phrases using quotation marks.

Example:

• "higher education": returns results that contain the exact phrase "higher education"