Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT are often used to combine keywords when searching research databases. This can help make your search more focused and accurate. Wildcards are also useful when the spelling of a word can affect your search results. The wild symbol may vary depending on the database you use. Truncation is a search technique used in databases that replaces the ending of a word with a symbol.
This allows different forms of the same word to be searched simultaneously, increasing the number of search results found. To truncate a word, you can delete the end of the word and add an asterisk (*) at the end. For example, if you want to search for topics related to politics, you can truncate the search term by adding an asterisk at the end of the stem of the word. This will help you find different forms and spellings of the same word. Truncation is also known as wildcard search and is very useful when you know that one of your search terms has multiple endings.
It allows you to search for a term and its spelling variants simultaneously. Using internal truncation can augment search results to include different forms and spellings of the same word. Wildcards and truncation are additional tools that can help refine your search strategy. They are especially useful when broadening your search for keywords by attaching them to the root of a word. By adding a truncation symbol to the minor word*, for example, the database will search for minor, minors, minority, minorities, etc.
