Once you have formed your thesis and outlined your essay, you can use your outline to help organize your search strategy. Once you have your outline, follow these steps:
If you break your search down into smaller pieces it will help make the search process less frustrating. It is easier to find information on smaller concepts or ideas than to search for all of the information you need for your paper at once.
Basic sample outline for essay about therapy dog events at colleges
In the sample outline above, the key concepts are underlined and highlighted and the main idea for each body paragraph is identified.
Brainstorming a word map: body 1 example
Start by identify your middle row terms connected by AND. These terms should be the terms that most represent the concept or idea that you are searching for. Then, brainstorm related terms or other ways to describe the idea for each of these main terms. These are the outer row terms connected by OR.
Using the word map to guide your search
This word map can then be used to help format the database search string using Boolean operators. Remember, you may need to refine this word map as you are searching. Research is not a linear process and as you search, you may come across additional keywords or ideas that you can add into your search string, or you may find that certain terms don’t work for your topic.
For the above word map, you can construct the following strings. Remember that terms connected by OR should be nestled in parenthesis.
You can then combine the above strings using AND in one search. AND instructs the database to search for results containing each term connected by AND.