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4.4: Translate Your Words to Database Terms

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    Keywords

    Finding relevant sources/citations is an act of translation. You need to translate what’s in your head to a computer. In Google Scholar or databases, you can start with the words from your Venn diagram. These terms are keywords and using them is like doing Ctrl+F to find any resource that has those exact letters in the title, abstract, or even the full text. Using keywords means you’ll need to think of synonyms and spelling variations. From our example, synonyms might include:

    Keywords
    My initial term Synonym(s)
    Graduate students Doctoral students, master's students, graduate programs
    Emotions Affect

    Subject Headings

    However, thinking of all the synonyms that an author might have used is quite difficult. Databases, unlike Google Scholar, have experts who categorize resources to make them easier to find, rather than relying on algorithms. All resources in databases are filed by their subject. You can think of this like a “tag”, except only experts apply these, not authors nor users. These are sometimes called subject headings or subject descriptors. You can use the database’s thesaurus to find (and include) related terms. For example, if you search for the subject heading therapy in APA PsycInfo, you'll find dozens of narrower terms (in this case, specific types of therapy) which you can include in your search.

    Compare

    The following table compares keywords and subject headings.

    Keywords vs Subject Headings
      Keywords Subject Headings
    What? Specific words Topics/subjects
    Who creates? You (natural language) Experts (controlled vocabulary)
    Homonyms automatically included? No

    Yes - All variations covered

    Connects to related, narrower, broader subjects
    When to use?

    Starting place

    Topic is new

    Topic is specific (e.g. location or organization)

    Topic has established academic research on it

    Highly relevant results

    One of the best ways to see how keywords or subject headings impact your search differently is to try them both and note how they impact your search differently. Often it's best to use a combination of both.

    Activity: Keywords & subject headings

    Try searching in a database for a keyword from your Venn diagram.

    Text Box

    • How many results do you get?

    Text Box

    Next, use the database’s thesaurus to find a subject heading representing your keyword.

    • Corresponding subject heading:

    Text Box

    • What narrower & related terms are in the thesaurus?

    Text Box

    • Would you be interested in articles on any of the narrower and/or related terms instead of your initial term? If so, grab all that interest you.
    • Now how many results do you get?

    Text Box

    Keyword searching might retrieve more results since it will find articles that just use the word once but aren’t about that subject. However, keyword searching will miss results that use a slightly different word, such as a synonym or narrower term. Subject headings help retrieve more relevant results. And the thesaurus can help you find related terms that can improve your search results.

    Keywords vs Subject Headings for your first quick scan
    Keyword from your Venn diagram Number of results in keyword search Subject headings (include narrower & related terms) Number of results for subject search Which seems more useful?
    Ex: therapy Ex: 495481

    Ex: Treatment

    Ex: cross cultural treatment; psychotherapy; trauma treatment; trauma-informed care

    		 Ex: treatment + narrower terms - 146419 Ex: Subject heading
             
             
             
             
             

    In our example, the subject heading seemed more useful because it helped us find additional, helpful terms, and because it found fewer results (but hopefully more topical results) than the keyword search. That will not always be the case, as it depends on your topic, the database, and the terms.

    In this section, we've just been adding one term at a time so we're not yet ready to review the results in any depth.

    In the next section, we'll combine terms.

    This page titled 4.4: Translate Your Words to Database Terms is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Frances Brady.