Skip to Main Content

Research Guides

Comprehensive Searching in the Social Sciences

When developing a comprehensive search, it is important to implement your search strategy consistently across all of the databases you will be using to capture all relevant results.

After testing your search strategy and confirming that it works in your first (or pilot) database, you will need to translate that pilot search into additional databases. However, not all databases use the same syntax, field codes, or subject headings so you will need to rewrite your search for each new database you use.

Here are some tools you can use to help with your search translation: