Why Didn't I Think of That?
Most of us don't spend much time thinking about what search terms to type into the search box. Unfortunately, sometimes the first words that come to mind aren't the ones that get us the best results. But once we have identified the key terms in our question, as we did in Day 1, we can start to look for synonyms, different words that mean the same thing.
Take the question we saw in yesterday's challenge:
How did the distribution of housework by gender change in the 20th century?
The key concepts are
| Concept 1 |
Concept 2 |
Concept 3 |
| housework |
gender |
20th century |
Just off the top of my head I can think of a few synonyms
| Concept 1 |
Concept 2 |
Concept 3 |
| housework |
gender |
20th century |
| housekeeping |
men and women |
1900s |
But I bet there are more. Here are some strategies for coming up with synonyms for key concepts:
- Search the key concept in Wikipedia: The opening paragraph, Table of Contents and other sidebars are expecially good sources of search terms. You may have heard you should never use Wikipedia for your academic work, but using it to identify search terms is always ok!
- Search the key concept in an internet search engine: Depending on the concept, this is hit or miss. Remember, at this point we're not really looking for detailed information, we're just scanning the pages to get ideas for search terms.
- Ask someone who knows a lot about the topic what words they would use
In the case of the example above, the Wikipedia entry I got when I searched "housekeeping" was actually titled "homemaking," a phrase I hadn't thought of. In the first paragraph and the table of contents there were several other synonyms I hadn't thought of:
If I do this with all three concepts, my list of possible search terms is much larger:
| Concept 1 |
Concept 2 |
Concept 3 |
| housework |
gender |
20th century |
| housekeeping |
men and women |
1900s |
| homemaking |
sex |
|
| household management |
|
|
| domestic labor |
|
|
| cooking/cleaning/laundry |
|
|
Before I start searching, I can't tell which of these terms will get me the best results, but now at least I have a bunch of search terms to try if I don't get good results right away.
Expert Language
Often experts use specialized words to talk about a concept. While these specialized words might not be what you and I would use in everyday conversation, they are often the key to finding expert opinions on a subject.
Look at the word pairs below for some examples of how expert vocabulary differs from the language we use in casual conversation.
| Everyday Language |
Expert Language |
| feelings |
affect |
| money |
capital |
| repeat offender |
recidivist |
Especially when you are looking for scholarly works, it really helps to figure out what words the experts or scholars are using and search for those.
One of the best ways to identify expert language is to search in a database that contains scholarly articles, like Google Scholar, and scan the results for synonyms you wouldn't have thought of.
Challenge!
Complete the chart below by using the strategies above to identify at least 3 synonyms for each of the following concepts. Then circle or highlight the synonym for each concept that you think is most likely to be used by experts in the topic. If you are completing this Challenge as an assignment for a class, return to your Search Term Challenge Worksheet and fill in your answers there.