Identifying Keywords to Start Your Search
Keywords are the main words or short phrases that capture the essential ideas of your research topic or question. They are what you type into search boxes in library databases or catalogs to find relevant sources.
How to Find Keywords
- Write Out Your Topic: Describe your topic in one or two sentences, or as a question.
- Example: “What are the effects of food insecurity on college students’ academic success?”
- Identify Main Concepts: Pick the most important 2–4 words or phrases from your description—these are your starting keywords.
- Example main concepts: food insecurity, college students, academic success
- Brainstorm Alternatives: Think of synonyms, related terms, or broader/narrower concepts for each keyword.
- For food insecurity, alternatives might include hunger, nutrition, basic needs, or food scarcity.
- Use a thesaurus and subject headings in databases, or look at abstracts and titles for more ideas.
- Mix and Match: Try different combinations of your keywords in the database to see what works best and yields the most relevant results.
Where to Look for Keywords
- Your Research Question or Topic Statement: Start here for the main ideas.
- Background Sources: As you do pre-research, note important terms and phrases that come up often.
- Database Subject Headings: Many library databases use official subject terms—look at these in relevant articles for more keyword ideas.
- Article Titles and Abstracts: As you find sources, scan titles and summaries for additional keywords to try.
Avoid
- Acronyms, like AI (artificial intelligence)
- Relationship words: words that get at the relationship between two topics (e.g., “impacts,” “effect of”)
- Judgment words: words that judge something to be better or worse than something else (e.g., “important,” “best,” “worst”)
Choosing strong, specific keywords—and combining them in different ways—will help you find the most useful sources for your research.
