Advanced Search Tips

There are two main ways of searching the Sage Research Methods platform. The first is the quick search, found at the top of every page. If this doesn’t get you what you are looking for, then the second method is to perform an advanced search.

The advanced search page can be accessed from underneath the quick search box at the top of every page in the Sage Research Methods platform. On this page you can select and search many different elements within the platform.

The first item on the page is a search box that allows you search on various specific elements on the site. You can select either full text, which is searches for the terms you have entered against everything on the platform, or you can select some more specific areas to search:

• Title – this searches against the titles of the content in the platform
• Author/Editor – this searches against the authors and editors of content in the platform
• Method – this searches our taxonomy of research method concepts
• Keyword – this searches the keywords associated with each title
• Abstract – this searches the abstract field of each title
• DOI – this searches against the DOI of each title on the platform
• ISBN – this searches against the ISBN of each title

You can add as many rows to the search as you like, using Boolean operators to structure the search:

• AND – this will search for results that fit with the first row and the second row
• OR – this will search for results that fit with the first row or the second row
• NOT – this will search for results that fit with the first row, but exclude titles that also match the second row

To search for an exact phrase place quotation marks around the phrase in the search box, for example “Analysis of Variance” would only return results containing that exact phrase.

Underneath this section is a section entitled Publication Information. This allows you to search for a specific publisher by their name or their location (e.g. Los Angeles). It also allows you to specify an original or online publication date range.

Under this you can search for specific content types, sub-types, and for content type specific elements. For example, if you expand ‘Books’ you can see specific types of books; like Handbooks or Little Green Books, whereas under ‘Video’ you’ll see options such as type of video, who or what is discussed in the video, and who helped produce the video.

The final section allows you to search for content related to specific disciplines.

Enter the search parameters you require and hit ‘Search’.

We advise that you start with fairly broad searches and become more specific only when needed, this should provide the best searching experience.