For the rest of this guide, we'll be using the research question "What is Six Sigma training's effect on women's health?" That can be broken down into the following concepts:
We'll now use these concepts as "keywords" – words or phrases that represent your concept. For the following examples, we'll be using the Academic Search Complete database.
| Concept 1 | Six Sigma |
|---|---|
| Concept 2 | women |
| Concept 3 |
health |
Search for these concepts using different boxes, like this:
For this search, I retrieved only 12 results, but they are very relevant to my topic.
Library databases work differently from Google. If you put all your concepts together in one box, the database will search for that as a phrase instead of distinct concepts that overlap, which is what we want in a lit review. By separating the different searches with the AND Boolean operator, we're actually retrieving articles that discuss intersection of all concepts:
By leaving quotation marks off, the database will automatically search for slight variants of the word, such as plurals or alternate spellings. However, if your concept is very specific, you might consider using quotes.
For a general literature review search, the Field is usually not needed. By leaving the option to All Fields, the database will search in the title, subject terms (more on this later), keywords, and author fields.
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