These databases are good for more than just finding scholarly articles. They are also excellent tools to think with. Don't worry if your topic is still too broad or you haven't yet formulated a good argument. Even at that early stage of the process you can use these databases to get a sense of what scholars have been writing about in your area and explore how you might join that conversation in your essay. Remember, your job is to find a way to fit your own voice into the work that has already been done by others. Don't write in a vacuum.
When searching online, various words are used to help broaden or narrow your search. Here are a few tips you should know before searching any academic database:
Boolean operators: Most internet and electronic databases follow the rules of boolean logic. Boolean logic refers to the relationships (connections or differences) between different search terms. The most common boolean operators are:
AND - used to narrow a search and establish more relevant results by linking keywords together (e.g. "behavioural" AND "psychology").
OR - broadens a search and get more results. Typically used for synonyms and words with variant spellings (e.g. "self-actualization" OR "self-identity").
NOT - use to narrow a search and get more relevant results (e.g. "behaviouralism" NOT "humanism").
Truncation: used to find similar words with different endings
e.g. human* searches "human and humans"
e.g. educat* searches "education", "educate", "educational" etc
asterisk (*) searches for various different endings of a word in most databases (including York University), however LexisNexis uses an exlamation mark (!).
Advanced Search - this option is available on most databases, and allows you to specialize your search based on documents (books, articles, video etc), date, geographic location, language, etc.
Quotation Marks - using quotation marks will allow you to search for exact phrases. For example, searching "mental impairment" will only retreive searches with both "mental" and "impairment" together in that order.
Refine Search - many online databases allow you to specify your search criteria after selecting your keywords and clicking on search.
Finding a Specific Journal - if you know the name of the journal you are looking for, type it in the library catalogue, then select "Periodical Title", then hit "go".