Academic Research Booklet

15

Key words and how to use them Before you start searching for information it’s good practice to think about what words and phrases you’ll use to find the information you need, without doing so you could easily miss out entire areas of research. Consider the many different synonyms we can use describe something. For example, if you were interested in looking for information on British Women in the 1920’s your keywords and phrases might look like this;

BRITISH

WOMEN

1920’S

Britain / British

Women

1920

United Kingdom / UK

Woman

1920’s

England / English

Ladies

Nineteen Twenties

Ireland / Irish

Lady

The Twenties

Scotland / Scottish

Female

Early Twentieth Century

Wales / Welsh

Female Population

Using various different combinations of keywords can return very different results on search engines and help ensure you don’t miss out anything important, for example consider the following search terms;

1. British women 1920

2. ”Female population” UK “early twentieth century”

Both combinations are very closely related in meaning yet they will likely end up finding different sources of information. Your keywords may change as your research progresses and you incorporate words and phrases that other researchers have used.