 Choosing and using Key Words brought to you by CSUSB's John M. Fowl Library. In this video, we'll cover how to develop keywords that you can use to find sources in the library's databases. The first step is to write down your topic or research question. Here we have, how does air quality affect women's health? Next, you'll want to identify the main ideas within your topic or research question. For example, let's begin with air quality and women's health. These are your keywords. Now, brainstorm and take note of related keywords such as synonyms or broader or narrower terms. This will give you more options to mix and match so you retrieve the best results. For example, air pollution and smog are terms related to air quality and females and gender might get results related to women. Possible combinations include air pollution and females, air pollution and gender, smog and females, smog and gender. You get the picture. Let's examine the actual search results retrieved by some of these strategies. Here we're using the database Academic Search Premier, which you can access through the library's website. The combination air quality and women's health gives 276 results. The combination air pollution and women's health gives 734 results. Changing keywords changes the number of results. If you get too many results, add another keyword to your search. Remember that the more keywords, the fewer the results. For our example, you could add an additional keyword such as poverty. This combination air pollution and women's health and poverty cuts it down to 14 results. Remember that brainstorming keywords is an important initial step in the research process. However, you might find that you'll need to revisit and change up your keywords based on what you find in the databases. For example, here I see the term ozone pollution. This would also make a great keyword to use.