Keywords

Which keywords you choose during a search can greatly affect your results. When conducting a search, it's not uncommon to receive too few or too many results, often leading to utter frustration. When this happens, using synonyms or a thesaurus to come up with alternative text could provide you with more accurate search results.

Examples

Narcotic versus Drug

Marijuana versus Pot versus Weed versus Cannabis

Prison versus Jail

Recidivism versus Reoffend versus Reoffense

Gun versus Firearm

Inmate versus Prisoner

Juvenile versus Young Adult versus Youth versus Delinquent

Death Penalty versus Capitol Punishment

Drunk Driving versus Driving Impaired versus Driving Under the Influence

Evaluate Your Resources

It's not enough to find an article, book, or some other resource related to your research question or topic. You must evaluate the resource for content, bias, authority, and relevance - among other things. We went over the IF I APPLY model in class, and it's linked below for your convenience. A tutorial and rubric titled Evaluating Information is also linked below for further help.