Overview

In this activity, we are going to search for resources on a multifaceted topic. We want to find World Wide Web documents that focus on how self-esteem relates to young girls' likelihood of developing eating disorders. There has been a lot of research in the past 10 years about how changes in modern life have hurt teenage girls' development, and we'd like to see if any of this research has been published on the Web.

Following the steps of the basic search strategy, we need to examine the facts of our search, choosing the appropriate keywords and determining which search features apply. Then, we'll go to the search engine and read the search instructions.

1. Identify the important concepts of your search.
   

   The most important concepts of this search are the development of eating disorders in adolescent girls and the way this is related to their lack of self-esteem.
   

2. Choose the keywords that describe these concepts.
   

   The main terms or keywords include the following: teenage girls, self-esteem, and eating disorders.
   

3. Determine whether there are synonyms, related terms, or other variations of the keywords that should be included.
   

   For teenage: adolescent, adolescence.
   For eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia.
   For self-esteem: self-respect.
   

4. Determine which search features may apply, including truncation, proximity operators, Boolean operators, and so forth.
   

   When developing a search expression, keep in mind that you place OR between synonyms and AND between the different concepts, or facets, of the search topic. If you write down all the synonyms you choose, it may help with the construction of the final search phraseology.

   Keep in mind there can be different ways to express the same idea. For example, for the facet teenage girls, you could say "teenage girls" or "adolescen* girls" instead of (teenage or adolescen*) and girls. Note that by using the truncated word adolescen, we would retrieve the words adolescent and adolescence. Before you get online, take a few minutes to determine whether you have used all the search features that you possibly can. It can save you a lot of time in the long run.
   

5. Choose a search engine.
   

   We are going to search AltaVista . This search engine supports full Boolean searching, which is a search feature we need for this topic. AltaVista's advanced search mode has a large search form, which makes it easier to type in a lengthy search expression.
   Click on the location field, type http://www.altavista.com, and press Enter.
   

6. Read the search instructions on the search engine's home page. Look for sections entitled "Help," "Advanced Search," "Frequently Asked Questions," and so forth.
   

   AltaVista has two search modes: simple and advanced. The simple search mode only supports implied Boolean searching. This means that you could perform an AND and NOT search by typing a + before the word if it has to appear in each of the results, and a – before words that you don't want in the results. Since our topic involves many ORs, we will need to do an advanced search.

   When you open AltaVista, you will see the simple search form.

    Click on the hyperlink Help.

    Click on the hyperlink Advanced Help.

   Scroll down the page until you see the Advanced search example.

   After reading the extensive help screens in AltaVista, you can start determining how to construct your search expression. In addition to reviewing how to combine Boolean operators with phrases and parentheses, you'll need to find out how AltaVista truncates words. You'll also need to read the section on ranking, or ordering your results. This is a crucial part of AltaVista's advanced search mode. You must type words in the Search box that you want to have in the first documents returned to you. If you don't, the results will be listed in any order, and the first documents may not be as relevant as the last documents returned.
   

7. Create a search expression using syntax that is appropriate for the search engine.
   

   Now that you've read the search help, it's time to formulate the search expression. It will help to write it out before you type it in the search form. Here is a possible way to express this search:

   (teenage or adolescen*) and girls and ("eating disorders" or "anorexia nervosa" or bulimia) and ("self-esteem" or "self-respect")

   Keep in mind that you can always modify your search later. Let's try entering it in AltaVista's advanced search form.

    Go to the advanced search form.
    Enter the search expression in the form provided.
    In the Search box, type in the phrase "eating disorders".
    Make sure all of the quotation marks are present and that you've closed all of the parentheses properly. Check your spelling and determine whether you have ANDs and ORs in the proper places.
    Click on search.
   

   
   
8. Evaluate the results. Are the results relevant to your query?
   

   Note the number of hits this search has returned to your screen. Look at a few of the titles. Do they appear to be relevant?

    Click on the title of a result on the list.

    Examine the list of results

   Examine the first page that appears on your screen. Is the information relevant to the search query? Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the arrows to see the next page of results.Look through the results on this page to determine whether they seem relevant.
   

9. Modify your search if needed. Go back to Steps 2 through 4 and revise your query accordingly.
   

   The results seem relevant, and the number of hits is an adequate set with which to work. You may, however, want to limit the results by date. You could do this by going back to the search query screen and typing a date in the space provided
   

10. Try the same search in a different search engine, following Steps 5 through 9 above.