 Once you've brainstormed some keywords, it's time to turn those keywords into a search statement. In this video, you'll learn some effective database search strategies and how to modify your search terms based on a results list. When you brainstormed keywords based on your research topic, you should have identified the major concepts of that topic and multiple keywords that could be used to describe those concepts. You'll start with this list as you develop your search statement. In order to turn our keywords into a search statement, we're going to use something called Boolean searching. With Boolean, the word OR is used within a concept to join synonyms. Basically, OR broadens our search by saying that any of the terms joined with OR is acceptable in our results. Adding more of these synonyms will give us more results. Here's an example. Let's say that I search just for the word hunger in a database. I get around 2,100 results. However, if I use OR to add the synonym food and security, I get almost 3,000 results. Well OR joins synonyms and joins concepts. Basically, AND narrows the results by telling the database that all of the concepts joined with AND must be present in the results. The more concepts we connect using AND, the fewer results we'll get. For example, if I use the word AND to add low income or poverty to my first concept, I'll go from around 2,800 results to only 587. Let's see what this would look like with the keywords I've brainstormed. I had three major concepts, and I brainstormed multiple synonyms for each major concept. I'm going to join the synonyms within each concept with the word OR. You don't have to use all capital letters, but they do make it easier to visually separate your search terms. To keep my concept separate, I'll put parentheses around each one. Now, between each concept, I'll add the word AND. Now I have what's called a search statement. I could put this into a database complete with the parentheses, and it would work just fine. However, a lot of databases set up their interfaces to help you create a search statement without worrying about all the parentheses. For example, this database from EBSCO hosts defaults to its advanced search feature, which has three boxes already joined by AND. Keep it to one concept per box, and join your terms in each box with OR. Keep the default AND between each box. If the database doesn't default to the advanced search feature, you can usually choose it from the basic search box. There's usually the option to add more boxes as well. Once you've gotten your initial set of results, you'll want to go through some of the results to see if your search terms gave you the kind of results that you were looking for. Sometimes the term that you think will work doesn't give you the kind of results you want. Keep on tweaking your search statement until you're happy with your results list. You might need to remove terms or add additional terms that you discover as you evaluate your results list. There are plenty of ways to get help with the library. For additional help with figuring out how to create a search statement, ask a librarian.