 Creating an advanced search strategy for comprehensive research comprises four steps. Identify search words. Expand these with synonyms. Create search strings. Then search relevant databases. Step one is to identify the keywords to use when searching. Write the research topic as a thesis statement to prove or disprove. Then highlight the words to use for a literature search. Step two involves expanding the list of key search words to include synonyms. Databases are literal. They only use the words that are given to search. To conduct a comprehensive search include synonyms and spelling variations for each search word in the search words list. Step three is to create search strings from the search words. Use boolean and search operators to truncate search words and to join search words into strings. The main operators are and to search for both words in a document or to search for either word in a document. Double inverted commas placed around words to create phrases, proximity limiters to search for words within a specific number of words of each other, and the symbol for truncation or stemming. Apply the truncation and phrase search operators to the search words. Next, create concept strings by combining the search words using the boolean operator or and close each concept string within brackets. The proximity limiter can be used to search for words near each other in any order. Concept strings can be refined to create a more comprehensive search by using the proximity limiter. For instance, the common word in many of the search phrases was death, so it's more efficient to create a string for the word death to be within three words of the word penalty, or the word sentence, or the word warrant, in any order. Now, not every database supports operators for proximity limiting and truncation, or they do, but format them in different ways. The proximity limiter wins the prize for the most variations across databases. As you can see in this example where one word is to be within five words of another in any order. Note the last example from the Ovid database where, just to complicate matters even more, you have to add one to the number of words apart to include the second word in the search. Check the databases search help to see how to format the operators. A search string can be created by joining the concept strings together using the boolean operator and, meaning that the concepts can appear anywhere within the same document. So a search string is essentially a combination of concept strings. Another option is to join the concept strings together using the proximity limiter to create a search string. A proximity of within 25 words will give results with the concepts within the same sentence. A proximity limiter of within 75 words will give results with the concepts within the same paragraph. Again, the search string is a combination of concept strings, but these are now within the context of each other rather than just appearing anywhere within the same document. Step 4 in advanced searching is to search relevant databases. For comprehensive results, search more than one database on a topic. On the Murdoch Libraries databases page, select from the Browse by Subject or Category menu. A list of relevant databases will then be given. Different databases hold different resources from different publishers with different journals and different subject specializations, hence the need to search more than one relevant database. To recap, advanced searching requires four steps. Identify search words, expand these with synonyms, create search strings, then search relevant databases. For more research help, visit the Murdoch University Library.