Using Keywords and Boolean Logic – Introduction

Approximate duration: 30 minutes

Description: Learn about Boolean operators and other tips and tricks to be a more efficient researcher.

What Do You know?

Before starting this module, test your baseline knowledge with the following questions. You will receive basic feedback on your answers that will be further explained by the content in the module. Good luck! These questions are just for practice: your results will not be recorded by the system.

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1.
Recall the fact pattern from The Research Process module, which involved Henry, an aboriginal man, and his wrongful conviction arising from potential defects in a police investigation. Using the FILAC method, you have now determined that you should research whether or not a negligence claim against the police department is possible.

What would be the best set of search terms to use to locate case law on this issue?(Click on all that apply.)

Negligence, duty of care

As you will learn in this module, this search would be excessively broad; in addition to useful cases, you will also return many decisions from completely irrelevant legal contexts (e.g. medical malpractice).

Police, suspects, investigation

These keywords will be, on their own, ineffective. You should include a reference to negligence or the fact that this is a civil claim to prevent your results from including irrelevant decisions (e.g. anything involving criminal law). As you will learn in this module, it is a useful research skill to include a combination or a hierarchy of keywords.

Torts, negligence, duty of care, police, suspects

This is an effective set of keywords to use. As you will learn in this module, you should use a combination of broader "catchwords" which refer to the general area and sub-area of the law in which your legal question is situated (here, "torts", "negligence" and "duty of care"), in combination with keywords more specific to the problem you are researching (here, "police" and "suspects").

2.
You are researching a claim arising from a situation where a guest fell on the steps of Mary's house during a party. You want to locate decisions involving liability for this type of accident or injury. What might some effective specific keywords and alternate keywords be?

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In addition to more general terms such as "negligence", "host", and "liability", more specific terms pointing to the nature of the injury will prove useful: e.g. "fall" or "fell", "slip", "trip", "tumble", "misstep" or "skid", etc. As you will learn in this module, alternate keywords are a useful tool to ensure you are returning all results which could be relevant to your research question.

3.
Kim, who works for Company A, discovered she was pregnant and informed her employer. Rather than permit and pay for a maternity leave, Company A fired her. You are now investigating a potential human rights case on Kim's behalf. What would you expect to be a main difference between these two search strategies?

"human rights violations"
human rights" /5 violations

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Answer A will return documents containing the exact phrase "human rights violations" only, whereas Answer B will return documents containing the phrase "human rights" within 5 words of "violations" regardless of whether the three words form a phrase or not. It is thus a broader search, for example, retrieving documents discussing "violations of human rights" as well as "human rights violations".

4.
You are conducting keyword searches related to discrimination on the basis of sex. Many of your search results are cases related to "pay equity" and unequal pay as compared to men, in which you are not interested. How can you eliminate these types of cases from your search?

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As you will learn in this module, rather than manually sorting out the cases in which you are not interested, an effective and efficient approach is to use the "NOT" operator in your search to eliminate these types of decisions; e.g. "sex discrimination" NOT "pay equity".

Learning Objectives

At the end of this module you will be able to:

Develop a search strategy using the research question(s) you have identified with a model such as the FILAC method;
Choose effective keywords and keyword alternatives; and
Create, using Boolean logic and operators, search strings that will successfully and efficiently return relevant research results.

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Last Updated: 2014-09-08