Why do you need to plan your search?
Planning your search before starting to look for information is an essential part of the process as:
Here is an example topic to help you get started:
Imagine you are interested in finding out whether there's any evidence to suggest that pilates can reduce the risk of falls in older people
You may already have been given an assignment question, but if not, turn your thoughts into a question or a sentence. This is our example topic above written as a question:
In older people, is pilates effective in reducing falls?
Highlight the keywords in your question or sentence. Here is our example question with the key concepts highlighted:
In older people, is pilates effective in reducing falls?
Most databases will search for exactly what you type in, so the next step is to think of any alternative words and spellings for these concepts. Think about:
In our example topic, there are several alternative terms for older people and for falls, but not for pilates:
| older people | pilates | falls |
| older adults | falling | |
| elderly | balance | |
| aged |
You may want to limit your search to ensure your results are relevant to your topic or to avoid retrieving too many results. Different databases have different options for limiting your search, but the most common ones are:
language - you may want to limit your references to those written in English
date - you may only be interested in references published after a certain date
age group - you may only be interested in children or older adults for example