4.b. Combine Keywords to Get Control of Your Results -- Proximity N3 Searching

The Near Proximity Search

The video showed you two types of proximity searches.  Most of the time, you only need to use the Near proximity search technique, which finds your keywords near each other in your results regardless of the order they are written in the article.  Only use the Within proximity search technique if you are still finding way too many irrelevant articles in your results after using the Near technique.

To use the Near technique, decide which two of your keywords or phrases have the most important relationship in your search.  Then put N3 between the keywords or phrases in your search string.

How does using N3 help you control your results? 

When compared with just putting keywords into your string with AND or nothing in between them, using N3 narrows your search results by only returning the articles where your two keywords were 3 words apart or closer in the text of the article.  When you use N3, you will get fewer results and a higher proportion are likely to be relevant to your question because when words are close to each other in the article, it is more likely that the researchers are writing about the relationship between the two words.  When your keywords are in different paragraphs of sections of the articles you are finding, it is unlikely that the article is relevant to you.  You can adjust how much the proximity search will narrow your results by changing the number.  If you increase the number, you may find more articles because your keywords can be more spread out. 

When compared with using quotation marks to do phrase searching, using the Near proximity search actually expands your results and gives you more results. The benefit of a proximity search instead of a phrase search is that the keywords or phrases can appear in any order and there can be one or more words between them, which is useful if researchers might use slightly different phrases to describe closely related concepts.

For example:

"attention deficit disorder"

Is a phrase search and will not also find articles that use the phrase attention deficit hyperactivity disorder even though these are closely related concepts and both might be relevant for your question.

attention N3 disorder

Is a proximity search that will find articles that use the phrases attention disorder, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, so it may save you time and frustration since all of these articles will show up in one search.  This search will also find articles in which the words attention and disorder are near each other for other reasons, so those articles may not be relevant to your question.

How the Search Looks in the Database