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Recreation, Tourism, and Nonprofit Leadership - Former

A guide to search strategies and best practices for information sources relevant to the field of leisure, youth, and human services.

Search Techniques for Databases

Example Using Multiple Search Tricks

Search Example: Adapted Sports

Limit to government and organizational sites  (site:)

  • Example:  "minority health"  site:gov

  • Example: "access to healthcare"  site:iowa.gov

Use quotes around a single word/phrase to force Google to include a word/phrase

  • Example:  "iowa"  "health literacy"

  • Example: "poverty"  "race" 

Use quotes around a phrase to keep next to each other

  • Example:  "maternal mortality"

Add the word "statistics" to include it

  • Example:  "poverty"  "statistics"

Use minus sign (-) to exclude words

  • Example:  "maternal mortality" -infant

Step-by-step Tutorials on How to Use Google

Advanced Research Techniques

Below are documents that show how to find more research using the "Snowball Technique" where you can locate older research (using bibliographies) and find more current research (using Cited By in Google Scholar).