SHE1002 Growth Development and Ageing: Overview
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This page provides information on getting started on your assignment and keyword searching strategies.
About this guide
This guide provides a starting point for using resources in the VU Library.
Steps to a successful assignment
- Collect all your information about the assignment.
- the handout on the assignment
- the type of resources required for your Reference List e.g. books, journal articles
- notes from classes on how to do the assignment
- Analyse and prepare
- identify the Required Reading
- identify keywords & search the Library for additional resources e.g. books, journal articles (see the boxes below to know what are keywords and for some keyword search strategies)
- Read for Information
- read Required Reading and make notes
- read the additional articles etc for information not in the Required Reading
- prepare each Reference as you read it, ensure it is written in the APA referencing style. See the APA referencing guide for further assistance
- Start writing
- collect notes from your reading and start to build your assignment
- write the correct References for each of your readings for your Reference List
Why use the Library?
What are keywords?
Key words are words in a question that tell you the approach you should take when answering an assignment question.
Keywords can include:
Content Words
- Tell you what the topic area is.
- Help you to focus your research and reading on the correct area.
- Think about synonyms or similar words (development OR growth OR progression OR learning).
Source: University of New South Wales
Limiting Words
- Tell you what area(s) to focus on, eg. cognitive development
- Define the topic area further, eg. cognitive development in children.
- Indicate aspects of the topic area you should narrowly concentrate on, eg. cognitive development in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Task Words
- Tell you what to do; the action(s) you need to perform, eg. compare, contrast, describe, summarise.
Keyword searching strategies Video
Search the library
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APA Referencing
Refer to the APA Referencing guide for detailed information on how to reference your source using APA style.
Transcript for keyword search strategies
Before you start researching on a topic…it is vital that you identify the keywords and apply some of the search techniques to retrieve the best results!
So what are keywords?
Keywords are search terms that represent main ideas and concepts in an assignment question or topic.
Library database looks for keywords anywhere in the record such as title, abstract, keywords and subject headings.
The first step is to identify keywords or ideas from the assignment question or topic.
For instance, if your assignment topic is ‘What effects do physical activities have on the overall health of women?’
Your keywords or concepts are
Physical activity Health Women
Now Step 2 is to think of some of the synonyms or alternative words or related words.
The third step is to use the search tipsor strategies to make your search more efficient!
Such as using Truncation, Wildcard and Boolean operators
The Truncation symbol represented by an asterisk finds a term with various endings in a library search or the databases.
A Wildcard symbol represented by the hash # allows you to find words with alternate spellings. For instance, if you want to find terms containing both the British spelling and the American spelling.
Combine keywords in a search using the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT
Use of the operators AND and NOT will narrow a search while the OR operator will broaden it!
If you are not getting the right kind of results change your keywords or refinements to broaden out or further narrow the results.
For further information, you can contact us online or talk to a library staff member if on campus.
End of video