We are going to use APA PsychInfo as our example database, because it's the most likely to have an answer to the question we are asking, and it has a common search layout. We are going to take the key words "training", "cat", and "welfare" from the example in the section on developing your research question to start with.
Here, you can see our three search terms in the individual search lines. Those terms are connected here, circled in orange, by the word AND. And is one of three connecting words, called Boolean Operators, that can be used to make your search terms work together. There is a break down of Boolean Operators in the below graphic. Basically, and combines your terms, or gives you a wide sweep that looks for either term disconnected from each other, and not excludes a term you don't want to see in your results.
I also tried a search for cat AND "positive reinforcement". I got fewer relevant results, but one of the results I did get is the most relevant to the question I'm asking of anything else I've found.
Useful things to note here:
- Finding the most useful results took multiple searches that approached the question from different angles. I didn't go through them all, because that would be a lot for you to read, but I promise this took more than a few tries.
- None of the searches I did were wasted effort. I learned something new about how to discuss the topic from every search.
- I formatted some of the key words differently.
- I put "positive reinforcement" in quotation marks to tell the database to treat that phrase together as one key word.
- If we'd used benefit, I would have formatted it as benef*. The asterisk tells the database to search for all variations of a word (benefit, benefitted, beneficial, etc.).
This study compares various cat training methods based in positive reinforcement, so it will help me figure out the best training method. Hopefully it might speak to the benefits to the cats as well. Let's look at the record for the article.
If you've read the abstract in the record and the article seems relevant to your research, you will want to click on access options.
Then click on find full text.
The screen we end up with here ultimately means the library does not own this article. If you click on the request through interlibrary loan button, we will borrow the article from another library for you.
Let's take a look at accessing an article the library does own.
Once again, you will click the button for access options. But the options in the drop down menu will look different.
When the text is available, you'll see something more like this! I highly recommend using the PDF over the Online full text. The PDF can often be downloaded, and you will have page numbers, which makes proper citations much easier!