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Education Reports from ERIC

The following sample searches are provided as guides to general types of searches in the educational reports from ERIC.

Results and Relevance Ranking

The results list provides standard information about each file and the number of documents found within a total number of documents searched. All search results records have a title that reflects the ERIC Accession Number, a description based on the first few lines of the document, and a link to the PDF document.

Each results list is sorted by "relevance ranking" with the most relevant documents appearing at the top of the list. Relevance ranking is determined by the appearance and frequency of the search terms in the document title, headings, or in the body of the document itself.

Example Record

The following is an example of a Site Search record:

Sample Searches (4)

The following sample searches are provided as guides to general types of searches that can be performed using the Site Search application.

Subject | ERIC Accession Number | Clearinghouse Accession Number | Report Number

1. Search by Subject

This type of search returns documents that are related to a specific subject. The word(s) that you enter as your search term(s) may appear anywhere within the document.

Query: "funding assistive technology"

Results: ED464457.pdf
ED 464 457 DOCUMENT RESUME EC 308 969 TITLE INST I TUT I ON SPONS AGENCY PUB DATE NOTE CONTRACT AVAILABLE FROM PUB TYPE EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS Informed Consumer Guide to Information on Funding Assistive Technology. ABLEDATA, Silver Spring, MD.

ED464451.pdf

2. Search by ERIC Accession Number

This type of search returns documents based on the ERIC accession number.

Query: "ED 464 452"

Results: ED464452.pdf
DOCUMENT RESUME EC 308 964 ED 464 452 AUTHOR TITLE INSTITUTION SPONS AGENCY REPORT NO PUB DATE NOTE CONTRACT AVAILABLE FROM PUB TYPE EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS Bielinski, John; Thurlow, Martha; Callender, Stacy; Bolt, Sara On the Road to Accountability:

3. Search by Clearinghouse Accession Number

This type of search returns documents based on the clearinghouse accession number.

Query: "PS 030 275"

Results: ED463860.pdf
ED 463 860 DOCUMENT RESUME PS 030 275 TITLE INSTITUTION SPONS AGENCY REPORT NO PUB DATE NOTE CONTRACT AVAILABLE FROM PUB TYPE EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS IDENTIFIERS Transition to Kindergarten. NCEDL Spotlights. National Center for Early Development &

4. Search by Report Number

This type of search returns documents based on the report number.

Query: "NCES-2002-169"

Results: ED467329.pdf
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 467 329 HE 035 126 AUTHOR TITLE INSTITUTION REPORT NO PUB DATE NOTE AVAILABLE FROM PUB TYPE EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS IDENTIFIERS Weir Christina Chang; Horn, Laura Persistence and Attainment of Beginning Students with Pell Grants.

Advanced Searches (2)

Query terms can be combined to further refine a search. Advanced searches can combine query operators, manipulate the query syntax, and include wildcard characters.

1. Search Using Boolean Operators

Query operators are instructions that simplify inquiries and allow for more precise searches and results. The Site Search application uses the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. The query language used for searching is not case sensitive.

Query: "best practice" AND "induction models"

Results: ED464039.pdf
ED 464 039 DOCUMENT RESUME SP 040 591 AUTHOR TITLE SPONS AGENCY PUB DATE NOTE PUB TYPE EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS IDENTIFIERS ABSTRACT Horn, Patty J.; Sterling, Hillary A.; Subhan, Subi Accountability through "Best Practice" Induction Models. Department

2. Advanced Query Operators Used Within Brackets

With the exception of the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT, query operators must be enclosed in angle brackets, as in <contains> and <starts>. See the table below for sample searches using advanced query operators used within brackets.

<many>	Considers how often the search word or phrase appears in the documents found and ranks the results by relevance or frequency. The higher the ranking, the more times the word appears in the document. Example: <many>literacy
<phrase>	Finds a grouping of two or more words that occur in a specific order. Parentheses or quotation marks must be around the words in the phrase. Example: <phrase>(proficiency testing)
<contains>	Finds specific words that are in the exact sequential and contiguous order in the title (Wildcards can be used). Example: title<contains>reading skills
<contains>	Excludes a particular word when used in conjunction with NOT operator. Example: title<contains>education NOT improvement
<ends>	Finds documents in which a document field ends with a certain string of characters. Does not rank documents for relevance. Example: test<ends>scores
<near> <near/#>	Finds words in close proximity to each other. Example: supreme<near>postsecondary
<near> <near/#>	Look for words within a specific number of words of one another. Example: trade<near/5>international
<starts>	Finds documents in which a document field, such as title, starts with a certain string of characters. Example: title<starts>code
<stem>	Finds all documents that have any stemmed variant of the search word or phrase. The search engine looks at the meaning of the word, not just its spelling--a search on the stem word "plan" would include documents that contain "planning," "planned," and "plans," but it would ignore similarly spelled words such as "planet" and "plane" that don't come from the same stem. Example: <stem>plan
<wildcard>	Finds documents that contain the wildcard characters in the search string. Can be used to search for words with similar spellings that would not be found by stemming the word. Wildcard-based searches do not require the use of the angle-bracket tag. Example: regulat* Retrieves documents that contain "regulate," "regulator," "regulated," and "regulating."
<wildcard>	The ? symbol can be used to make a set number of characters variable anywhere in a word. One ? replaces one character. Example: medic??? Retrieves documents that contain "Medicare" and "Medicaid."
<word>	Retrieves documents containing words that stem from the search term. Example: <word>legislate Retrieves documents with the words "legislate," "legislated," "legislation," etc.