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PS 5340: Problems in American Public Policy: Finding Articles

This guide was created for Dr. Howard Balanoff's POSI 5340: Problems in American Public Policy class.

How to Search

Search by keywords and small phrases.

Maximize your keyword searches with Boolean searching:

 

        
 AND 


internet AND teenagers 
all words must appear in the result list 






 OR  





teenagers OR adolescents




either word may appear in the results.








 NOT 






  internet NOT "social network" 




  must mention the term "internet", but excludes 
items with the phrase "social network"



 Note:  some databases use AND NOT rather than NOT 
and Google Scholar uses the minus (-) sign








Use "quotation marks" to search for phrases.


Use the database’s "help" feature to find the syntax for advanced searches. This varies by database



Consider truncation. The asterisk (*) symbol is used most often 


adolescen* will search for all forms of the root, adolesence, adolescent, adolescents 


Try using database Subject or descriptor terms. Those are listed in the database’s thesaurus, or they may be listed near the article abstract. These can be useful for learning the preferred vocabulary of a discipline.