Question

Research Strategy: Discuss how the specialized search varies from the common research strategy.

Answer 1

Difference between Specialized search strategy and common research strategy are as follows :

1. Meaning

Specialized search strategy :

A search strategy is an organised structure of key terms used to search a database. The search strategy combines the key concepts of your search question in order to retrieve accurate results.

Your search strategy will account for all:

• possible search terms
• keywords and phrases
• truncated and wildcard variations of search terms
• subject headings (where applicable)

Each database works differently so you need to adapt your search strategy for each database. You may wish to develop a number of separate search strategies if your research covers several different areas.

It is a good idea to test your strategies and refine them after you have reviewed the search results.

Common Search strategy :

A Research Strategy is a step-by-step plan of action that gives direction to your thoughts and efforts, enabling you to conduct research systematically and on schedule to produce quality results and detailed reporting. This enables one to stay focused, reduce frustration, enhance quality and most importantly, save time and resources. The Research Strategy is the nuts and bolts of your application, describing the rationale for your research and the experiments you will do to accomplish your desired goals. This post will discuss an extremely important phase in the process; clearly defining your research strategy.

2. Techniques

Specialized search strategy :

• Choosing search terms
• Searching with keywords
• Searching for exact phrases
• Using truncated and wildcard searches
• Searching with subject headings
• Using Boolean logic
• Citation searching

Common research strategy :

research strategies includes experiment, survey, case study, ethnography, grounded theory, action research, and phenomenology. Research methods for data collection includes questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, observations, and documents.