Sociological Abstracts' Basic Search defaults to a keyword search across all record fields. Use Boolean operators, proximity operators, and field codes for a more specific keyword search. As you type into the search box, it will suggest terms to search by in a drop-down menu below the search box. 

• Choose specific terms that are closely related to your research topic, including terms you might use when discussing your topic with a colleague such as jargon, synonyms, and abbreviations.
• Sociological Abstracts searches are not case sensitive. 
• Sociological Abstracts automatically finds variant spellings of words. 
• Use quotation marks to search for an exact phrase (e.g. "child development") 
• Use Boolean operators to limit, broaden, or eliminate terms from your search:
  • AND limits search results, finding articles with both terms 
  • OR broadens results, finding articles with either term 
  • NOT eliminates terms from the results, finding articles with one term but not the other 
• Use truncation and wildcards to broaden your search:
  • An asterisk (*) replaces multiple characters in a term, finding variant spellings and suffixes. Sociological Abstracts only allows for truncation within a term (e.g. colo*r for color and colour), or at the end of a term (e.g. farm* for farm, farms, farmer, etc.); never at the beginning. 
  • A question mark (?) replaces a single character in a term, finding specific variant spellings. Sociological Abstracts only allows for wildcards within a term (e.g. sm?th for smith and smyth), or at the end of a term (e.g. cat? for cat and cats); never at the beginning.
• Use proximity operators to make a search more specific:
  • NEAR/# or N/# denotes how far apart you want your search terms to appear (e.g. nursing NEAR/3 eduction for the two terms to show up within 3 terms of each other in the search results. 
  • PRE/# or P/# denotes how far apart you want one search term to appear before a second term (e.g. nursing PRE/3 education for the term nursing to appear 3 terms before education). PRE/# is different from NEAR/# as it specifies which term you want to appear first in the search results. 
• Use field codes to make your search more specific (e.g. AU(Smith) for documents with Smith in the author field. 
  • Common field codes include AB() for abstract, AU() for author, SU() for subject, TI() for document title, and YR() for publication year.