Part 1
Here are the 5 questions that I choose to use Boolean operators on:
1. Is a vegetarian diet healthier than a meat-based diet?
-"Vegetarian diet" and "meat diet"
-"Vegetarian health" and "Omnivore health"
2. Is the current lack of sunspot activity affecting global warming?
-"Sunspot activity" and "global warm*"
-"Sunspot activity" and "global warm* effects"
3. Does anti-smoking advertising by the tobacco industry lead to increased smoking among youth?
-"Anti-smoking advertising" and "increased youth smoking"
-Advertising and youth smok*
4. How much more can a college graduate expect to earn over someone with a high school diploma?
-"College graduate earnings" and "high school graduate earnings"
-"How much college graduate earn*" and "how much high school graduate earn*"
5. What breeds of dogs make good therapy pets?
-"Therapy dogs"
-"Therapy dogs" or "Therapy pets"
Part 2
So one of my research questions was, Does censorship infringe on Americans 1st amendment?
When I placed this entire statement into EBSCOhost I received 0 results.
I placed 1st Amendment and censor* and received 56 results.
I placed Censor* and America and received 732 results.
I placed "Censor*" and United States I received 4712 results.
By using the Boolean search statements I was able to broaden my search tremendously. I will definitely use these searching techniques when writing my next research or persuasive paper.
Thank you,
Megan Fletcher
Hi, Megan:
ReplyDeleteYou are doing a good job breaking down the questions into their key concepts. I just urge you to be selective with your quotes, if you put quotes around the words, the database will only retrieve articles with that exact phrase which is a powerful tool but if you are not sure if the phrase is commonly used, you might want to start broader, i.e. "anti-smoking advertising" AND "youth smoking". And for the earnings question I would suggest "high school" AND college AND (earnings OR wages or salary). There are lots of studies about this and I think wages gets the best results but here is where you want to use synonyms to capture variations in language. When using truncation, be sure you consider what results you are including, it's another great tool but can really muddy the waters if you don't put the * in the right place. Overall, you have a good feel for using boolean to create search statements.
Cheers,
Andrea
The "" was throwing me off a little bit, now I will only use them when I am looking for that specific term. Thanks for the help. Also I was a little scared of using or, but on the earnings question that would have been a great place to practice this.
DeleteMegan Fletcher