Refining Your Results List

Did you retrieve way too many results? Overwhelmed? Or, just not satisfied with the results?

Reduce your results to a manageable number by narrowing your search or modifying the keywords as needed. Try a few of the following tips.

Tip #1

Filter your results by publication date and/or source type

Tip #2

Add more keywords in the search box

Tip #3

Try using synonyms for your key terms:

Example: Instead of "death penalty," try "capital punishment"
Example: Instead of "global warming," try "climate change"

Tip #4

Rather than searching for the broad topic or cause/effect of your topic, try to search for one specific cause/effect:

Example: Instead of searching for causes of alcoholism, try searching for alcoholism genetics, or alcoholism family history, or alcoholism anxiety.
Example: Instead of searching for effects of divorce on children, try searching for divorce children academic achievement, or divorce children life satisfaction, or divorce children aggression

Optional resource: Watch this 1-minute videoLinks to an external site. (no sound) showing how to refine your results in Academic Search Complete. In the video we start with a simple keyword search. The search is refined by: full text articles in scholarly journals, a narrower date range, and by subject.

Citations and Attributions

Content adapted from Library 10 by Cabrillo College Library, licensed under CC BY 4.0