AU Library Education Research Tutorial

5. Focus	Rule of thumb: a retrieval set of 10-30 articles is ideal. Fewer and we must question the scope of the coverage in the literature, or the usefulness of the search for identifying literature on that topic. More and you may not have time to evaluate the results. Many more and your topic is too broad to manage a typical GPS assignment.
Broaden a small retrieval set	Remove a concept or use a more general term to increase the number of hits. Browse the articles you retrieve for additional ideas. Link from subject headings or "descriptors" in the article to related terms in other articles.
Narrow a large retrieval set	"And" additional concepts to narrow the results to a smaller set of articles. The most recent publications generally sort on top, so obtaining current information is usually easy!
Truncation symbols	Truncation is another way to broaden your search results. Add the truncation symbol to the root of a word. The symbol is usually * (asterisk), but sometimes $,?, !, or #. psych* retrieves psychology, psychiatric, psychological If the asterisk (*) doesn't work, view the database help screens or contact a librarian for assistance.
Continue to Retrieve Articles

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