The ERIC Thesaurus is a list of controlled vocabulary of education-related subject headings called descriptors in the ERIC database. Use of the thesaurus subject search terms retrieves more precise results.
You can browse ERIC's entire thesaurus here or try searching a term directly in ERIC to see what related terms come up. To search the thesaurus, begin on the ERIC home page and toggle from the word ' Collection ' (in blue, above the search bar) to ' Thesaurus ' (which will turn green):
Type a term you're familiar with to see what other helpful search terms pop up. Searching the word 'gifted' turns up 5 results: Academically Gifted, Gifted, Gifted Disabled, Gifted Disadvantaged, and Gifted Education.
Clicking Academically Gifted display a page showing broader or narrower terms, related terms, and terms no longer in use (but may appear in historical or older resources.)
Knowing the vocabulary that ERIC uses for your research topic will help you find better and more relevant results.
Find ERIC Advanced Search Tips directly on their website.
Boolean Operators
Use Boolean operators between terms and group of words in your search to narrow or broaden your search. The common operators are: AND, OR, NOT.
─AND narrows the search and retrieve records containing all of the terms it separates.
─OR broaden the search and retrieve records containing one, the other and both terms it separates.
─NOT narrows the search and retrieve records with the first term and exclude the word following the NOT.
● Quotes
It is best to use quotation marks around terms/words to retrieve exact match and narrows the search.
Example: “mathematics education”, a search without the quotes will retrieve records with mathematics and education.
Author example: “Faltis, Christian” will retrieve records/results of works written by this author. Type the last name first followed by the first name.
● Parentheses
Use parentheses ( ) to enclose search terms for more accurate results/records on your topic.
Example: (teacher education), (educational instruction) and (minority)
● Truncation
Use an asterisk (*) at the end of a root word to retrieve all the various endings of the root word.
Example: learn* retrieves learn, learning, learner, learnt, learned.
● Descriptor search
Descriptors are often phrases (example: “primary education”) and (reading) this can be an efficient way to search ERIC and retrieve more precise search results. Use quotation marks around two or more term/words with a descriptor search.
Example: “childhood education” will retrieve records relevant to childhood education.
● Keyword search
Keyword search results can be too many or too little and not relevant.
Example: Childhood education (search the database for both terms childhood and education) a lot of records are retrieved; “childhood education” (search the database as a phrase with both terms appearing next to each other) fewer records are retrieved.
● Phrase search
Two, three or more words is considered a phrase search.
Example: kw=educational leadership will retrieve results of both words educational and leadership anywhere in the search results.
“educational leadership” will retrieve results with the words together or next to each other of educational leadership.
● Target audience
This search can be used if the author identified an audience.
Example: ta=administrators will further narrow the search results with the term administrators.
● Refine search
Use this process when your search result is too much or too few. You can use the following to refine your search:
-Dates, Peer reviewed, Boolean operators, year or range of years, document type, source, etc. and target audience to further narrow your search from the list of target audiences in ERIC.