Help with using the intermediate search
Use the intermediate search if you want to find more exact results.
The intermediate search function can be used to construct a query using words from a title, author name, topic or free text - or a combination of them all. Search (Boolean) operators are used to construct relationships between different search terms. It is possible to only search for records where the full text is available or to exclude events.
Search operators (And, Or, Not)
Help with truncating terms
Help with entering terms
Searching by date range
Search Operators
If you use and between your terms, the search will only generate results that include all the search terms. Using and will reduce the number of search results.
Example: Search for publications written by Sheila Furness and Philip Gilliagan
The authors may also be typed as: furness s* and gilliagan p* (Note: it is necessary to use truncation if you do not have an author’s first name)
Note: A person's surname is listed before their first name. You must search this way or you will not get any results.
Example: Search for resources on elderly people with dementia
Check the topic list for the Topics – in this case Social Care Online uses older people
Remember to change the field from Free text to Topic
If you use or between your terms, the search will find records containing either one or both of the search terms and will remove duplicate records. Using or will increase the number of search results.
Example: Search for resources on children (age 0-10 years old) or young people (age 11-17 years old)
If you use not between your search terms, this will exclude results containing the second term. It is particularly useful if your term is associated with another common term. It is important here to ensure you enter your terms in the correct order.
Example: Search for results about autism but not in relation to children.
Help with truncating terms
The Intermediate search option allows you to search for variations of words with a common stem or prefix. It works by searching for the prefix of a word and generating a list of results that include all variants of the word with that prefix.
This is sometimes called 'stem search' or wild card searching. For example if you searched for educat*, the search will generate results that include educate, educating, education, educational, educator, educators, etc.
Note : It is easy to generate unwanted records, or miss records if the truncate symbol (asterisk) is wrongly placed. E.g. a search on pol* will produce results which refer to policy, police, politics
Example: Search for educat* in title
Results include:
Title: Guidance on looked after children with special educational needs placed out-of-authority
Title: External review of Children Missing from Education (Scotland) CME(S) service: Scottish Government progress report on recommendations
Title: Essential shared capabilities for the whole of the mental health workforce: bringing the educators into the frame.
Title: Educating difficult adolescents: effective education for children in public care or with emotional and behavioural difficulties
Help with entering terms
When entering words in the fields in the intermediate search box:
Author: Type in an author name, with their surname before their first name.
No punctuation is required. Example: levin enid
Topic: Type in a topic. You should use a topic that is included in the Social Care Online topic tree.
The topic tree is available for reference, in hierarchical and alphabetical formats, as a PDF file.
- Download the Hierarchical topic tree
- Download the Alphabetical topic tree
Title: Type in any word, phrase or whole title.
Example: Involving service users and carers in social work education
involving service users
users and carers
user*
Free text: Type in any word or phrase. This will search the whole record, including author, topic, title, publisher, abstract etc. for the phrase you are looking for.
Social Care Online is not case sensitive. Example: the author Enid Levin can be typed as Levin Enid or levin enid.
Searching by date range
Select a Date from: year and Date to: year from the drop down menus. This will return a result search for publication dates based on the range of years you have chosen.
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