Social Determinants of Health

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. "public health").

(Parentheses)

Keywords within parentheses will be searched as a single unit within the search statement e.g. (poverty OR low income) AND health

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

Discuss the impact of poverty on health status in Canada.

Step 2: Identify keywords for your topic.

Step 3: Find synonyms 

Step 4: Build a search 

(poverty OR "low income" OR "income status")  AND (health OR wellbeing) AND (Canad* OR Ontario)

Use simple keywords when searching the Library databases

(poverty OR "low income" OR "income status") 

AND  "food insecurity"

AND (Canad* OR Ontario)

see below for more information