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Constructing a search

Once you have identified your keywords and alternative terms, you need to think about how to put them together. This section will help you to combine your keywords and apply search techniques to improve your search results.

The shaded area in the diagram below represents your search for "cheating", "exams" and "university". Your search will only return results where all three keywords are mentioned.

To carry out this search you would need to enter the following: cheating AND exams AND university.

Combining similar terms

The shaded area in the diagram below represents your search for "cheating" or "plagiarism". Your search will return all results where either of these keywords are mentioned.

To carry out this search you would need to enter the following: cheating OR plagiarism.

Putting all your keywords together

Putting these elements together, you can see that the search now includes the alternative keywords. So, for example, as well as searching for "cheating", it will also search for "plagiarism". By doing this, we have made the search broader, which means that we will get more results.

To carry out this search, you would need to enter the following:
(exam OR assessment) AND (university OR higher education) AND (cheating OR plagiarism)

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