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Sport Sciences & Physical Education

Starting point for your research in sport sciences. Use this guide to locate resources for your field of study.

Search Tips

Search Strings

Put Together Your Search String

A search string is what you enter into a database to locate sources. 

Revisit the keywords, or search terms, from the "Starting Your Research" tab of this guide. Enter a keyword into a database, or combine keywords using the tips in the following box.

Start Broad

To get an overview, begin with general terms, then refine your search using specific keywords or phrases.

Example: Start with "sport management" and then refine to "leadership in sport organizations."

Adapt

If your initial search doesn't bring your expected or desired results, try using or combining synonyms or experimenting with search modifiers and Boolean operators. 

Booleans & Search Modifiers

Boolean Operators

Using the Boolean operator AND means that you'll only get results that contain both or all of your search terms. AND helps narrow your search. Using the Boolean operator OR means you'll het results with any of the search terms entered. OR helps broaden your search terms. Finally, using the Boolean operator NOT eliminates keywords that you don't want your results to contain. NOT helps narrow your search.

Other Search Modifiers

When searching, use parentheses to separate keywords when you are using more than one operator and three or more keywords. Parentheses help organize and clarify your search. Truncation is when you use an asterisk to replace the end of a word. This allows you to search for multiple forms of a word at once. For example, search from cloth* would yield results that contain cloth, clothe, clothes, clothed, or clothing. Using a wildcard when searchign refers to using a symbol to replace a letter in a word, often a question mark. This allows you to search from closely related words or different spellings of the same word. Think woman and women, for example, or color and colour.

Phrase Searching

Use quotation marks to search for an exact phrase.

Example: "youth physical activity programs." .