Subject searching can improve the relevance of your search results. Education Research Complete uses subject labels called "descriptors" to describe what an article is about. For example, any article about gym class or P.E. will be given the descriptor "Physical Education." Articles usually have more than one descriptor. Use the Subjects search option to search by descriptor. A Subjects search is also called a Thesaurus search in Education Research Complete.
Click on Subjects and enter a search term. If you search for working students, for example, the results will show the closest matching term "PART-time students".
Clicking on Part-time Students takes you to a screen with a definition of what exactly the database means by "Part-time Students." This definition is called a scope note. Broader and narrower terms will also be listed. To search for articles that have been described with the descriptor "Part-time Students", select it by checking the box and then Add to search.
Clicking on Add to search puts the subject term in the search box in the form DE "PART-time students". DE means descriptor. Click on Search and the database will retrieve a list of articles that have been described with the descriptor "Part-time Students."
You can add more than one descriptor to the search. For example, this search has added the descriptor DE "STUDENT financial aid" which is the preferred term for "financial aid" in Education Research Complete.
You don't have to start with a Subject search to identify the terms used to describe what an article is about. For example, a Basic search for the term recess found the article shown below. "School recess breaks" is the preferred subject term or descriptor for the word recess in Education Research Complete. Other terms used to describe what this article is about are "Friendship", "Social skills", and "Physical activity". Clicking on any of those terms would do a new search finding only articles that are also described with that term.
What words would you use to describe what is happening in this picture?
The descriptor used in Education Research Complete is Creative activities & seat work.
Fingerpainting, by bloomsberries, used under a Creative Commons CC BY-ND 2.0 license.