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SPE 151 Introduction to Speech

This guide will help you locate, evaluate, and cite credible sources for your three speeches: Demonstration, Informative, and Persuasive.

Keywords and Database Search Strategies

These search strategies can help you in any database you use. Using the right keywords can affect how relevant your results are.

Keywords fall into three main categories: Broad, Narrow, and Related.
  • Broad: More general categories – Endangered Species
  • Narrow: A specific category - Animal Species, Plant Species, or even a specific endangered animal species like the African elephant
  • Related: Synonyms or similar terms, or terms that are connected to your topic - conservation, habitat, climate, human causes, the United States Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973

Start with your topic as a keyword and add a related word that you found as you looked for background information.

  1. Search with specific keywords (not questions or long phrases).
  2. Search 2-3 keywords at a time. One keyword will bring you many results, while too many keywords may be too specific and bring you zero results. Start with one keyword, then add one more at a time. Each keyword you add will reduce your results, but they will be more relevant.
  3. Use quotation marks around words you want to search as a complete phrase (example: "endangered species").
  4. Limiters: always use the full text limiter. Use the peer reviewed limiter if that is the kind of information you need. You can also adjust the date range to get the most current articles.
  5. Number of results: Strive for no more than 200 hundred results. If you have more than that, try revising your search by using different keywords, more specific keywords, or adjust the limiters. You're not looking for the most results, you want the best results. 

Look at the difference in these two searches:

In the first example, I searched only African elephants, a narrow keyword for endangered species. It returned 1,919 results that includes a wide range of information about the elephant. That's too many to be helpful. Look at the second example to see the search strategies used and how that improved the number of results.

 

To revise my search, I made the following changes:

  • Used quotation marks to search "African elephants" as a complete phrase
  • Added poaching as a related term
  • Used the full text and peer-reviewed limiters

Now I have 30 results, which are much more relevant to my topic.