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EDFOUND 740: Techniques of Research: Strategy 1: Keywords & Limiters

Class Resource & Assignment Guide for Educational Foundations 740

Keywords & Limiters for Locating Empirical Research

When searching for empirical (primary or original) research articles, look to subject headings and key terms for clues. 

subject headings and empirical research clues

These are examples of some key words you might use in your database searches to help narrow your results to this type of research. Use of these keywords does not guarantee that all articles found will be empirical research. You will need to analyze each potential article to see if it contains empirical or original research.

 Keywords:

 Thesaurus- Subject Search:

empirical
quantitative
qualitative
case study
questionnaire
instrument
reliability
validity
findings
protocol
method* (method or methodology)
sampl* (sample or sampling)
statistic* (statistics or statistical)

quantitative studies
qualitative studies
Chi Square Test
analysis of variance
confidence intervals
statistical significance
T-tests, P-value
data Analysis
etc.

 Additional Limiters:

Look for the Advanced Search option in each database. If the database allows, such as EBSCOHost CINAHL, limit your search by publication types that are quantitative by definition. For example:

  • randomized control trial
  • meta-analysis
  • clinical trial

Limiting to "peer-reviewed" articles will also prove useful.

This example shows available limiters in CINAHL (EBSCOHost). Not all databases in EBSCO offer limiters like those pictured below. When that is the case, type subject headings as described above in your search.

Ebsco limit options