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WGS 1040 - Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies

Search Techniques for Databases

Example Using Multiple Search Tricks

Search example: Teen smoking

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).