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To begin your research, you want to come up with an effective search strategy. This is the starting point of your search process. To do this, you have to consider a few different things. 

First, develop your research question: What are you trying to answer? 

This will serve as the foundation for your search strategy. 

In order to develop keywords, look at the nouns within you research questions - persons, places, and things. You can also think about the 5Ws: 

• Who? Consider the different people or populations involved.
• What? Are there subgroups to this topic that are interesting to me?
• When? Consider the timeframe or parameters, when did your topic take place?
• Where? Places that are involved or impacted by your research topic.
• Why? Why is this topic important or meaningful to your or to others?

List keywords that relate each concept in your research. Boil your topic down to the most important words. Ignore superfluous words like in, the, of, with, against, affect, impact. Begin with a keyword search!

Boolean Operators are words and symbols, such as AND or NOT, that let you expand or narrow your search parameters when using a database or search engine. Knowing how to use Boolean Operators effectively can save you a lot of time and help you to find useful sources, determine the relevance of your research topic, and create strong research questions.