Now that you’ve searched for all of the terms that represent your search concepts, you need to combine them in meaningful way that will retrieve the most relevant results.
Boolean operators is the fancy term used for the small connecting words AND & OR
Your decision to connect your search terms with AND or with OR will have a big impact on your search results!
AND combines different concepts and narrows your search
OR combines like concepts and broadens your search (OR is more!)
During your database session, your individual searches for terms will be saved in a search history. You may see this history on the search page (i.e. in OVID) or you may have to go to the Advanced Search screen (i.e. in PubMed).
Select the terms you want to combine by checking off the boxes beside them, then click on the AND or OR button below the list of searches. By selecting AND, the only items that will come up in the results have all three of the subject headings “Craniocerebral Trauma” AND “Sports” AND "Recovery of Function”
The combined search will be added to the list of searches. Click on “display”, or scroll down the page, to see the results.
If you find an article that is on topic, you can click on “Complete Reference” to look at the record to see what subject headings were assigned to it, then do a search for any additional subject headings that would be useful. You can use the combining process to mix and match search terms to modify your results.
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