Step One: Create and write your research question, example:
Should employees in Canada be given unlimited vacation time?
Step Two: Create your search, and focus on nouns (people, places or things) only. These will be your keywords or phrases - not who, why, where, when, how or what. (Check out the video on the left for more tips.)
Step Three: Identify synonyms for each keyword or phrase. Remember to put any phrases in quotes, e.g..
Keyword 1
|
Keyword 2
|
Keyword 3 |
employees
|
vacation
|
Canada |
workers
|
holidays
|
Canadian |
staff
|
"time off"
|
Ontario |
You can find more synonyms or keywords using the Visual Thesaurus (see below) or Thesaurus.com .
Try adding an asterisk * to the root of any word to pick up other variations of the word:
Enclose phrases in quotation marks, to keep the words together in the order you need, e.g.:
Capitalization doesn't count, EXCEPT if you use AND, OR or NOT in your search, those words must be in capital letters, or they will be ignored, e.g.