Welcome to the BUL Education guide. 

This guide from the Bethel University Library is here to help with your research projects.

You've got your research question; now it's time for effective searching. Try these tips:

• Brainstorm a variety of keywords (achievement, performance, ability, aptitude)

• Connect keywords with AND (poverty and education and achievement)

• Use quotes to search for an exact phrase ("social inequality")

• Use OR to search synonyms (poverty or low-income and education)

• Search by keywords, not sentences (poverty and "secondary education" and achievement instead of effect of poverty on high school students)

• Use * to get different endings of a root word (school* finds school, schools, schooling)

• Look for subject terms or descriptors; use these terms to find more articles on your topic