You can use the following search tips in the databases to help narrow or broaden your search results.
Tips for Database Searching:
Boolean searching: using the terms and, or and not to enhance your searching possibilities.
AND: used to combine two keywords or phrases to narrow your search.
Example: “poverty” AND “academic achievement”
OR: used to broaden your search by allowing you to search for two or more similar words.
Example: “socioeconomic status*” OR “social status”
NOT: used to narrow your search by eliminating a word or words from your search results.
Example: “urban housing” NOT “housing projects”
Phrase searching: placing a term in quotation marks to let the computer know to search for specific terms as one phrase rather than separate words
Example: “socioeconomic status”
The asterisk (*) can be used to search for several endings of a word at the same time
Example: “urban develop*” will search for the terms “development,” “developing,” etc.