Building a Database Search

Phrase searching is a way to narrow down your search results. This is helpful when searching for a two or three word term.

Most search engines will automatically search for each individual word in your search, rather than the specific phrase you are looking for. This means the results will be relevant but not necessarily the best options.

The way to solve this is by using quotation marks. 

ex. "heart attack", "car accident", "test anxiety", "fight or flight"

• Please note that some search engines use single quotes instead of double ('heart attack' instead of "heart attack"), so try this if your results don't change.

Here is an example:

First, I searched for home school. I know I am trying to find articles about home schooling, but to the search engine, I'm looking for anything about homes and schools. This means a lot of my results are comparisons between home and school environments- useful, but not what I am looking for. This search in Academic OneFile returned 51,906 results.

Next, I searched for "home school". This narrowed down my results a lot- now, I will have to scroll through less irrelevant texts to find what I am looking for. This makes sure all the results have the words "home school" next to each other, and in that order.