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2.3.2: Translating a topic into keywords

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    By now, we know that it's important to come up with a good list of keywords to cover your bases when researching your topic, and that searching with keywords will save you time during the research process. Figuring out what keywords to search with does take some brain power, but luckily, there are some steps you can follow to create a well-rounded set of keywords.

    Step 1. Write down or type out your topic sentence or research question.

    Example:

    What are the impacts of social media addiction on teenagers?

    These will be the most important single words or phrases (single ideas that happen to have more than one word) in the sentence.

    Example:

    What are the impacts of social media addiction on teenagers?

    Remember: only select the most important words from your topic. Some words you don't need to highlight and why:

    • it, to, the, of - articles and prepositions can usually be ignored because they are so common, and are not directly related to your topic.
    • should, be, use, for - adjectives and words that indicate a relationship between two ideas can usually be ignored because they may eliminate otherwise relevant results from your search. These words are also not directly related to your topic.
    Interactive Element

    You try! Use the interactive example below to try selecting keywords from a topic sentence. Note: this isn't graded, just a chance for you to practice!

    Step 3. Brainstorm alternative keywords.

    Look at your highlighted words from your topic sentence or research question. What other words could people use for those ideas? Use what you already know about your topic to come up with your alternative keywords. Remember: a good list of alternative keywords is not going to be super long, it is going to predict alternative words authors might use when they write about your topic.

    Example:

    What are the impacts of social media addiction on teenagers?
    ↓
    Social media: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok

    Addiction: Dependency

    Teenagers: Adolescents, teens, youth, young adults

    Notice that my list of keywords isn't super long. It includes my original keywords from my research question, plus some alternatives that I think authors might use when writing about my topic. If I find out that I'm missing important keywords, I can always add to my keywords list as I research!

    Interactive Element

    You try! Use the interactive example below to select alternative keywords. Note: this isn't graded, just a chance for you to practice!

    Drag the alternative keywords to the correct place. Put alternatives for regulations, fast fashion, and environment in the box to the right of the appropriate keyword. Put alternatives that don't make sense next to "not a good alternative."

    Step 4. Put quotation marks around phrases.

    Look for keywords that are phrases (single ideas that happen to have more than one word) and place quotation marks around these phrases.

    What are the impacts of social media addiction on teenagers?
    ↓
    "Social media": Instagram, Facebook, TikTok

    Addiction: Dependency

    Teenagers: Adolescents, teens, youth, "young adults"

    Wait, what do quotation marks do?!

    Quotation marks go around keywords that are phrases. Phrases are single ideas that happen to have more than one word, like "social media." Quotation marks tell the search engine to search for that phrase instead of searching for the words separately. This is important because my topic is about "social media" (websites or apps that allow users to share content and participate in social networking), not social (relating to society/community) and media (broadcasting, internet, journalism).

    Here's how quotation marks work when searching:

    1. I put social media addiction teenagers into the search bar without any quotation marks.
    2. The search engine sees that I am searching for four keywords (social, media, addiction, teenagers). It will find me results that include those four keywords.
    3. In some results, some of the keywords might be together ("An addiction to social media is tough for a teenager...").
    4. In other results, those keywords will be separated ("You may have seen the media covering an addiction problem faced by teenagers, whose social habits...").
    5. In both cases the search engine has done its job because all four of my keywords are found in the text. But that second result isn't really about an addiction to social media, so I can work to improve my search.

    Let's improve that search with quotation marks:

    1. I put "social media" addiction teenagers into the search bar with quotation marks around "social media."
    2. The search engine sees that I am searching for three keywords ("social media," addiction, teenagers). The quotation marks around "social media" have told the search engine that those two words are actually a phrase and are to be treated as a single keyword. This means that all my results have to include the phrase "social media."
    3. The search engine will now find me results that include my three keywords.
    4. The first result from my example above will still show up in my results list, because the words social and media appear as a phrase ("An addiction to social media is tough for a teenager...").
    5. The second result ("You may have seen the media covering an addiction problem faced by teenagers, whose social habits...") will no longer appear because the words social and media were separated in the text.
    6. I successfully used quotation marks to remove an irrelevant result from my search!

    Remember, you do not need to add quotation marks around single words.

    Interactive Element

    You try! Use the interactive example below to select phrases that need quotation marks. Note: this isn't graded, just a chance for you to practice!

    Watch the video below to see CCC Librarian Justine complete the 4 steps of translating a topic into keywords with the example topic from this reading. Watch closely, you'll be completing these steps in your Week 2 Forum Assignment!

    2.3.2: Translating a topic into keywords is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Clackamas Community College Library.