How to Improve Database Search Results

No References or Too Few References

• Look for misspellings in your strategy.
• Decrease the number of concepts searched.
• Try a broader search term.
• Use a term from the thesaurus (i.e., MeSH or subject heading list) for searching.
• Use the Related Articles or Similar Articles feature.
• Check for missing or incorrect field qualifiers.
• Remove terms that are unlikely to be used by an author.
• Replace terms that are too general or too specific.
• Increase the number of synonyms or alternatives for a term.
• Use a truncation symbol at the end of a term to pick up variant endings.
• Try running the search on earlier years (back files) of the database.
• Try a different database.

Too Many References

• Choose the most specific subject headings or most significant key words.
• Use subheadings to narrow the focus of the subject heading if appropriate.
• Increase the number of search concepts that are ANDed together.
• Use fewer synonyms for terms.
• Make sure synonyms are grouped within parentheses (term_a1 OR term_a2 OR term_a3) AND term_b.
• Make a term from the thesaurus (i.e. subject heading list or controlled vocabulary) the main focus of the article ("major" in PubMed and "focus" in CINAHL).
• Limit to review articles.
• Limit your search to type of article, language, age group, current years, etc.
• Ask for significant words to be in the TITLE of the article.