What is a research strategy?

Once you have identified the key words included in your assignment question, you can begin to plan how you will look for the information you need. An effective way to plan your research is to develop a 'research strategy'.

A research strategy is a plan for how you will look for the information needed. A good strategy will provide more relevant search results.

You will need to:

• Identify any additional or related terms, synonyms , acronyms, spelling variations, and plural/singular forms. Different people refer to the same concept or item using different terms. When you search for information, you need to consider the range of synonyms that might be used in place of the key words you have selected. If you only search on one term, you risk missing records that use different terms. Use a thesaurus to help identify these.
• Consider how these terms can be combined using boolean logic to provide effective results.