Occupational Therapist Assistant & Physiotherapist Assistant

Keyword Searching Tips

Before entering keywords in the search box, it is useful to write down several words that best describe your research topic. Use a thesaurus if necessary to generate more words.

Descriptive words can then be connected by using words such as AND and OR to form meaningful search statements.

Connecting Words/Boolean Logic

AND Narrows a search by joining keywords so to find articles and other documents that contain both of the keywords (e.g. poverty AND health).

OR Broadens a search. Will find articles that contain at least one of these keywords (e.g. poverty OR low income).

NOT Narrows a search by excluding a term. NOT connector will find articles that contain the first keyword but not the second keyword (e.g. Canadian NOT Amercian).

"Quotation marks"

Quotation marks are used to search keywords that are a complete phrase (e.g. "muscular dystrophy").

(Parentheses)

Keywords within parentheses will be searched as a single unit within the search statement e.g. (rehabilitation OR therapy) AND "spinal cord injury"

Truncation

When a keyword is truncated, the ending of the word is removed and replaced with a truncation symbol, usually an asterisk (*). A truncated keyword search will find articles with all instances of the root word and the root word combined with any possible ending (for example, Canad*  - this will find Canada or Canadian or Canadians).

Step 1. Describe your Topic

What is the role of Occupational Therapy Assistants/Physiotherapy Assistants in Canada?

Step 2: Identify keywords for your topic.

Step 3: Find synonyms 

Step 4: Build a search 

(occupational therapy assistants OR physiotherapy assistants OR rehabilitation assistants) AND (role OR responsibilities OR practice) AND (canad* OR ontario)

Use simple keywords when searching the Library databases

"stroke patients"

AND  rehabilitation

see " Example: Developing Keywords and Constructing a Search"  below for more information.