Читать книгу The Research Experience - Ann Sloan Devlin - Страница 62

Before proceeding, a fuller discussion of keywords is in order. Whatever the stage of your search (beginning or further along), and whether you target journals, books, or other sources of materials, your search will be more effective if you choose appropriate keywords. As mentioned, keywords are search terms for information retrieval. In most journals, for example, authors are asked to provide five or six keywords (words or phrases) for their article that represent the focus of the work. In the case of journals that follow APA style, these items are listed right under the Abstract (Figure 2.5).

Keywords are important for both authors and users because keywords link the search terms you use in a database to articles that use those keywords. In a recent article looking at the stress patients feel in hospital rooms (Andrade & Devlin, 2015), the authors evaluated Roger Ulrich’s (1991) theory of supportive design (a theory that predicts what types of elements in design will reduce patients’ stress). The authors selected the following keywords: hospital rooms, design, patients’ stress, and Ulrich’s theory of supportive design.