Search Strategy Worksheet

When planning your library research, it is often helpful to state your research topic, analyze it by concept, and lay out a search strategy.  Look for distinctive terms, synonyms, acronyms, variant spellings, etc. that will help you to find useful information.   And, add to your list of terms as you are in the process of searching.  Here is a simple form that you can use to accomplish this task.  An example follows.

My research topic is:

Analyze Your Topic and Record Selected Search Terms:

Example for the Search Topic " Relationship between Nutrition and Childhood Poverty":

Based on this example, you will search:  (child OR children OR youth OR infants OR girls OR boys) AND (poverty OR poor OR basic needs OR wealth OR social classes OR economics) AND (nutrition OR food OR diet OR malnutrition OR protein OR starvation)