It therefore expands results to include relevant results that may have been missed if one of the keywords was not specified. The Boolean operator OR is used to combine keywords that are similar in meaning (synonyms) and that may be used interchangeably in academic papers. As a result, the results have been narrowed down to exclude articles that do not contain the two keywords because they would be irrelevant in this case. In the example above, the search results will only include articles that have both the keywords maternal health and nutrition. This modification will bring the following 76,400 results, shown in the image below:
I can modify the search to be: Maternal health AND nutrition in Kenya.
For instance, I may be interested in the role nutrition plays in maternal health in Kenya. I can use the “AND” operator to include other keywords in the search bar that I am interested in. In the example above, all articles that have the keyword maternal health will be included in the results. If I use Google Scholar to search for the topic as it is, I will get the following 191,000 results shown in the image below: The AND operator is used when you want to include two or more different concepts or phrases in your search.Īssuming that my topic of interest revolves around maternal health in Kenya. In the process, Boolean operators help to maximise relevant results and minimise irrelevant results. Broaden the results to include more relevant keywords.Narrow the search results to exclude irrelevant keywords.There are three Boolean operators that are written in capital letters for them to work in database search.
#Boolean search operators how to#
This post discusses in detail and with practical examples how to use the Boolean operators and modifiers to find original academic papers from journal databases. One effective search strategy is the use of the Boolean operators and modifiers. Related post: Where To Find Journal Articles For PhD Research: A Beginner’s Guide Equally important is knowing “ how” to search for original academic articles. As a PhD student, it is not enough to know “where” to search for original academic papers to base your research on.
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