Mastering Literature Reviews: Effective Search Strategies and Tips (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Welcome back subscribers. Are you ready to start your literature review? Let's zoom in on the first step of writing a good literature review. You need to search for relevant literature. If you don't know what a literature review is, check out this video first. Okay, so obviously you're searching for literature related to your topic. Start with creating a list of keywords on your topic. For example, our topic is social media's impact on the younger generation's body image. So our list of keywords could be mental health, body image, teenager, social media, Facebook, Instagram. Once you've had that list of keywords ready, go to your favorite database. It could be your university's library catalog, PubMed, Science Direct, or Google Scholar, which is what we will be using in this video. Now who doesn't know how to type in their keywords and hit enter? That's for amateurs. I'm about to show you two more tricks to instantly narrow down your search and find much more relevant papers. For the first trick, you should first think and write down all the synonyms or subtopics of the keywords you've searched for. In our case, Gen Z, younger generations, and teenagers all represent the age group we're looking for. And here's the pro tip. Use these things called Boolean operators to help us refine the search. You can use these in all different databases. You use AND, so all the keywords have to be included in the results and not just part of the search. Use OR to search for either of the synonyms. And for terms you don't want in your results, for example, if you're searching for the fruit apple and not the tech giant, we can use the minus sign to exclude technology, iPhone, Mac, etc. You can also use double quotation marks to search for results with exact matches. So in this case, for body image and social media. Once you've found a source you think might be useful, make sure to read the abstract before diving in headfirst. You get a glimpse of what the research is about and know if it's relevant to your topic. And when you've found a source that's relevant, check its bibliography and look for source titles that seem related to your topic. Often you'll be able to dig up some gems. To identify the most important publications on your topic, take note of recurring citations. If the same authors, books, or articles keep appearing in your reading, make sure to seek them out. You can also look at how many times the article has been cited on Google Scholar. If the number is high, the article is probably influential in the field. Then you should definitely include it in your literature review. Keep digging and reading. And when you're done, watch this video on how to identify themes, debates, and gaps. I'll see you there.