Once you've come up with some search terms and chosen which databases to use, it is time to start searching. To improve your search you can use different search techniques. Below are some useful search tips that can be used in most databases.
Putting AND between your search terms means that all your search terms must be included in the list of results, for instance code-switching AND hispanics. The more search terms you combine with AND, the fewer hits you will get.
If you put OR between your search terms, that means one of the search terms must be in the result list. For example: hispanic OR latino. Use OR when searching for synonyms and/or closely related terms in order to broaden your search. The more search words you combine with OR, the more hits you will get.
Use quotation marks “ ” when you want to search for a term that is made up of two or more words, for example, “discourse analysis”. You will get hits where your search terms occurs in that exact order. If you search for the same terms without the quotation marks, you will get hits where these two words occur separately in text as well. Using quotations you will get fewer, but probably more relevant hits.
Search for the first part of a word followed by * to find all possible endings and inflected forms of the word. For example: latin* will generate results for Latino, Latina, Latin American etc.
You can use several of this search techniques together in the databases. We recommend using the advanced search form that you can find in most databases by clicking "Advanced search".
In some databases you have the option to limit your search to only include materials that have been scholarly refereed, or peer reviewed, by ticking the box that says "peer review". You can also limit your search by publication date, document type, language etc. Remember that not all literary research is published in scholarly journals and that research findings may stay relevant for longer within literary research compared to other fields, so don't discard a source just because it is not peer reviewed or was not recently published..