Subject headings are limited to a set of terms developed by the company that produces the database. Rather than thinking of every possible synonym, find and use the subject heading for that concept to retrieve all relevant articles, regardless of what terms where used by the authors. . A specific subject heading may be difficult to find or not exist for your concept . Truncation Truncation allows you to search for a root form of a word and pick up all variations of that term. Truncating broadens your search and ensure that you retrieve all items containing some form of that word.
Databases use different symbols to truncate words.
Either check under the database's help screen or ask a reference librarian. Truncating a word too short will probably retrieve too many unwanted terms. To use two or more Boolean operators, you need to know how to use a technique called nesting . Use AND to narrow a search since both terms must be present in the articles you retrieve. The black area represents only those articles that have both children and adolescents present.