EDFOUND 781: Foundations of Gifted and Talented Education

Here are some search tips to remember when searching the databases.

1. Be sure to mark the "peer reviewed" or "scholarly" limit when searching for peer reviewed articles.

2. Use quotation marks around phrases (e.g. "health education", "type II diabetes")

3. Use the word AND between different concepts.

4. Use the word OR between similar concepts.

5. A common truncation symbol in the databases is the asterisk symbol *. Using this will allow you to search for various forms of the word in one step. For example, strateg* will search for strategy, strategies, strategize, and strategic.

Here are some example searches:

• ("experimental methods" OR "nontraditional education" OR "experimental teaching") AND autism
• "health education" AND (certif* or credent*)

Databases use controlled keywords known as thesaurus terms or subject headings or descriptors to categorize each article or record. For example, many library catalogs use Library of Congress subject headings. The thesaurus terms vary for each database according to their indexing system. For example,

You might say "ESL Students"

ERIC uses the subject heading "English Language Learners"  

Education Source (EBSCO) uses the term  "LIMITED English-proficient students"

If you choose to search multiple databases simultaneously, try using the OR search connector to capture all articles that use the variations of this concept. For example:

"English Language Learners" OR "Limited English-proficient students" OR "ESL Students"

The thesaurus may be labeled Thesaurus, Subjects, or Descriptors depending on the database.