Literature searching

Question 1

What is truncation?

Answer 1

Anorexi* - will search for any words and phrases etc. beyond the * e.g. anorexia, anorexic

Question 2

What does adj mean?

Answer 2

????

Question 3

When would you use AND?

Answer 3

To look for 2 different concepts- look for both

Question 4

When would you use NOT?

Answer 4

When you only want to look for one of the concepts

Question 5

When would you use NOR?

Answer 5

When you don’t want to look for either of the concepts

Question 6

When would you use ADJ?

Answer 6

Useful if you want to look for papers where your words might appear NEAR each other rather than only right next to each other. e.g. ADJ eating disorder will bring up eating mental disorders

Question 7

When would you use the ? wildcard?

Answer 7

? is used to search for a single character, or no character at all. This is very useful for some British and American spellings, e.g. orthop?edics will find both orthopaedics and orthopedics

Question 8

When would you use the # wildcard?

Answer 8

is used to search for a variable single character, e.g. organi#ation will find organisation and organization