2.

Understanding your topic

Section outcomes

This section covers understanding your assignment / research topic and how to identify
keywords to search for information.

When you have completed this section you should be able to:
• define the objective for your assignment/research
• identify keywords for a topic
• broaden or narrow a topic
• use search operators to combine keywords

Building a search strategy

Watch this video on Task Analysis. You will require speakers or headphones to listen to the
audio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=O26orMyZZhY&feature=emb_logo

Analyse your assignment/project topic

Understand your topic by:

• Removing the task words/instruction words e.g. discuss, tabulate, compare, explain,
etc.
• Identifying keywords - this should give you an idea of the content and subject matter
needed. Identifying synonyms or broader terms which would be of value by using
reference sources e.g. dictionaries, thesaurus and encyclopaedias.
• Looking for qualifying words – these words would highlight a particular time frame,
geographic location and it will assist you to understand your topic better.
 How to find what you want easily

Search strategies...
• Define the topic: know what you are looking for. Write down your topic and consider
different aspects of it. Try to be specific about what it is you want to discover about your
topic. It helps to write it out in the form of a question e.g. what is the best method to screen
pregnant women for AIDS?
• Break it down into its individual concepts. Are you looking at a disease/condition? Do
you want to know about diagnosis, therapy, outcome, prognosis or risk factors? Is there a
particular age group, ethnic group or gender? Do you want to know adverse effects,
prevention and control, mortality or etiology e.g. pregnant women, AIDS screening?
• Decide on the words/phrases to describe the concepts. Consider all possible words or
phrases that might be used to describe the concepts of your topic. These should
include synonyms, variations in spelling i.e. either US or UK (organizations or
organisations) singular or plural (man or men) and related terms (anatomy, body parts)

How to find what you want easily

• Combine your keywords. Search operators AND, OR and NOT are used to combine
keywords to either broaden or narrow your search.
• Display your results. Take a look at your search results. Are the search results giving you
information on your topic? Did you get too many or too few results? Nowhere near your topic
at all?
• Refine your search, if necessary. You may need to either broaden your keywords or
narrow them e.g. anatomy becomes human body.

The use of search operators

One would use the operators AND, OR and NOT to refine ones search, to broaden ones
search or to narrow ones search. Below are examples of the way the one would use
the search operators:

AND: the use of the operator AND will locate all the search terms entered. This operator
narrows the search results

OR: this will retrieve any or all of the specified terms. It is used when there is a variation of
spelling, synonyms or when there are related terms. The operator will assist to broaden your
search
NOT: the system will retrieve results that include only the first term and exclude the second
term. The use of this operator will narrow the search results down

Narrow Your Topic

An example of an assignment question is: how do advertisers market their products to

women? You could narrow the topic of marketing even more by adding a sub-topic.

Marketing

Sub-topics:

Age group Marketing to adolescents

Location Marketing in South Africa
Additional topic Marketing in magazines
Population Marketing to minorities or women

It is helpful to write out your topic as a sentence or a question.

Brainstorm Some Keyword Terms

An example of an assignment is: how do advertisers market their products to women ?

Refine topic – narrow your topic and be more specific
Pick out important words in your topic as highlighted above.
Pick Keyword Terms - Now it's your turn!

Let’s look at some keywords in the given topic

Is there a relationship between viewing violent TV programs and youth violence?

Write down as many keywords as you consider important.

Pick Keyword Terms - Now it's your turn!

The words highlighted in yellow are what we consider to be the keywords in this question:
Is there a relationship between viewing violent TV programs and youth violence?

How does your list compare with ours?

Other related words for these keywords might be:

TV youth violence
violent
television
child fight
media
children crime
movie
young people criminal
film
adolescence aggression
screen
adolescent aggressive
video
assault

Brainstorm Keywords -- Now it's your turn

List all the related keywords that you can think of for the word marketing.

Your list and ours should have the same terms.

Here's our complete list:

marketing
market
target markets
sell
selling
sale
advertise
advertising
advertising campaigns
advertisement
retail
e-commerce
You may have thought of some words we didn't. It is best to avoid using long phrases. If you
can't think of concepts and ideas, you can always refer to a subject encyclopedia.
Online databases

Now let's switch gears and talk about databases.

Just as an index at the back of a book lets you quickly go to a topic within the book,
online databases quickly sort through thousands of records to identify articles or books on a
topic.

Before you choose a particular database for your search, it is helpful to know some
fundamentals about searching.

Fundamentals of searching

The parts of each record an index or database are searchable. These parts are called fields.
Searching in a particular field, eg. author or title, will search only for that information

But . . . a Keyword Search looks for items anywhere in the record. It is the broadest search.

Keyword Searching

A keyword search looks for items anywhere in the record

Also, keyword searching allows you to combine more than one topic in a search, for
example, "tobacco AND advertising."
Using Keyword Searching

There are some good tools you can use in keyword searching.

Search operators, such as AND, OR, and NOT.

Search operators

Search operators are used in keyword searches to link together two or more terms. The
most commonly-used search operators are AND and OR

AND narrows your search; you get fewer records, because both words/concepts must be
present in the records found (image)

OR broadens your search – searches both words together and separately

 Types of Databases

The two types of databases that you will be using are library catalogues and article indexes.

Library catalogues:
organises all of the materials a library purchase. These include records for books,
magazines, journals, newspapers, videos, sound recordings, images, etc.
Examples:
• EDS (DUT library discovery tool)
• iLink (DUT Library catalogue)
Note: Library catalogues do not contain articles.

Article indexes:
are used to identify articles on a topic. Some article indexes are general or multidisciplinary.
Many others specialize in a particular subject area, such as biology, education, or business.
Examples:
• Academic Research Complete - a multidisciplinary database
Business Source Complete - a database specialized in business

Understanding your topic

You've completed the section Understanding your topic and should be able to:

• broaden or narrow a topic

• identify keywords for a topic
• use search operators in constructing a search

You can now complete the assessment and then continue to Section 3.