Tips for searching: Find qualitative research

• Break down your research topic into keywords. Keep a list of your keywords and keyword results for later use.
• Use Boolean operators to connect your search terms/keywords to narrow or broaden results. See Boolean searching.
• Use parentheses, quotation marks, and/or asterisks with your search terms to create search phrases. Again, it helps to keep a list of how you connected your search terms/keywords for later use in other databases.

Once you have your keywords, try constructing them into selective free-text expressions. This method can be used to search the Title, Abstract or Keyword database search fields to help identify qualitative research. Try using one (or more) of the following types of selective free-text expressions:

• A word (without spaces or punctuation).  Examples: interview or phenomenological.
• A phrase (includes two or more words together, separated by spaces; however, the words must be enclosed in double quotation marks) Examples: "life experiences" or "focus groups".

• Databases enable sets of results to be limited or filtered by specific fields.
• Determine your search conditions, such as Publication Type, Clinical Queries or Publication Year and apply them to your search.
• While most search limit filters are located on the left-hand side of the search page, the location of the filters can vary from database to database. If in doubt check the database help pages.

• Databases categorise their records using subject terms or controlled vocabularies (Thesauri).
• Subject Headings will vary for each database.  Medline uses Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) for its indexing system. For example, the term 'qualitative research' is indexed as "Qualitative Research".
• Related Subject Headings such as Focus Groups, Interviews, or Descriptive Research can also be useful. Combine searches with topic Subject Headings to locate qualitative research.