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Conducting a good literature search depends on setting a course and making a plan for your search. One part of your plan should involve testing various searching techniques and finding good keywords/search terms. It can be smart to put your search terms into a table. You can see an example of this at the end of this page.

Find synonyms for your search terms

To find as much material as possible, you need to search with multiple search terms within the same category. For example, if you are looking for literature about abstinence, you should search for both “abstinence” (informal language) and “substance withdrawal syndrome” (the scientific term).
All of the search terms in a category aim to find information about the same thing. The words are often synonyms, which means that they have identical or similar meanings.
To find synonyms, you can start by reading about how your discipline or theme is described in a reference work, schoolbook or in the introduction of a dissertation.
Often, you need to try both broad terms, like demography, and narrower terms, for instance migration, immigration, and emigration.
Because many databases require that you search in English, it follows that you should translate your search terms to English. Look up and translate your search term (for example with Ordnett).
You can use GPT UIO or Microsoft Copilot to get suggestions for more synonyms and search terms, but remember to critically assess the suggestions you receive.

Tip! Here is a video that describes the process: Fra tema til gode søkeord - FilMet (oslomet.no)

Example of a search table for synonyms

When you are working on finding synonyms, it can be helpful to gather all of the search terms in a table. Based on the research question/problem Youth with ADHD’s experiences of school, we have selected three search components. We have filled in various synonyms for the three components.

Search table
Youth	ADHD	School
Adolescent	Attention Deficit Disorder	School
Adolescence	Hyperactivity	Classroom
Youth	ADD	High school
Teenager	Minimal Brain Disorder	Junior high school