Criminology Master Thesis

Databases for criminology

Search techniques

In order to search effectively and find relevant articles, it is important to understand how the databases interprets your keywords and how you can combine them using operators like AND and OR.

Combining search terms with OR

experiences OR perceptions

• retrieves any of the search terms
• the more search terms you combine with OR the better you cover the research area
• your key concepts and their synonyms become a search block

Combining search terms with AND

pregnancy AND violence

• retrieves all of the concepts
• makes the search narrower

Phrase searching

"intimate partner violence"

• use if you want to search for a specific phrase
• excludes records where the search terms aren't written as a phrase
• narrows the search

Truncation

pregnan*

• Often done with an asterisk (*)
• searches for word variations - example above searches both pregnant and pregnancy
• broadens the search

Identify and refine your key search terms

Searching articles for your master thesis is an iterative process where you will need to choose initial key search terms to start doing scoping searches, then refining the key search terms until you arrive at your final search strategy.

Using database records to develop your search strategy

When deciding on your final search terms you can use the database records for studies you have already identified as relevant through your scoping search.

• Search for the study in a database, click on it and have a look at the words used in the title, abstract, keywords and subject headings.
• Document all the new search terms and try them in new scoping searches.
• Add relevant new search terms to your own search strategy and repeat the search.

Doing this for a number of relevant studies can help you build your search strategy. Using the same vocabulary as the researchers are using in the title and abstract and the same vocabulary as the different databases are using when idexing their records (subject terms) will greatly improve your search strategy.

Building your search block strategy

When you have formulated your research  question and identified your key concepts and their synonyms, the next step is to build your search block strategy. In the example below we have three search blocks to be combined.

Research question

Experiences of partner violence during pregnancy

We connect the synonyms with OR and the search block with AND. We also use search techniques such as phrase searching and truncation to search efficiently.

Nesting

Nesting is a search technique that refers to using parentheses in a search strategy that uses both the operators AND and OR. It must be performed whenever a database only has one text entry box for performing the search, like in Google Scholar. By putting parentheses around the different search blocks the database can interpret the precedence of the operators AND and OR. Searches may yield vastly different results if the parentheses are omitted due to an incorrectly interpreted search.

Nesting in Google Scholar

Example with nesting

pregnan* AND (partner violence OR domestic violence OR IPV)

A search for pregnan* AND (partner violence OR domestic violence OR IPV) will yield records with pregnancy and partner violence (or the different synoyms).

Example without nesting

pregnan* AND partner violence OR domestic violence OR IPV

A search for pregnan* AND partner violence OR domestic violence OR IPV (with parenthesis omitted) will yield records that deal with pregnancy and partner violence, or deal with domestic violence or IPV alone. Not using  parentheses disconnects the term “pregnancy” from the rest of the search. This is likely to lead to an overwhelming number of irrelevant articles in your search results.

Nesting using multiple text entry boxes

When searching databases like Criminology collection, Sociological abstracts or PsycInfo, where you can search using multiple text entry boxes, you can use the different text entry boxes in combination with the drop down boxes containing the operators AND and OR. Here you use the nesting technique by putting earch search block in its own a text entry box.

Create database account – save searches and articles

Create an account

Click "Create My Research Account" and then complete the registration. The database account is free of charge.


 

Save articles

Check the box to the left of each reference. Then click on the dots to the right of each reference, you can choose several references at the same time. Choose "Save to my research account".

You can also mail the article, click the envelope in the same menu.

Save your search

• Click "Save search/alert"
• Create a name and click "Save"
• The searh is saved on your account, click on the symbol below: