You open a database to explore a professional question. You type a few words, many results appear, and you start reading titles. A few minutes later, the purpose of the search becomes less clear. Were you looking for an explanation, a comparison between methods, or a study involving a particular group?

Before choosing search terms, it can help to pause over the question itself. Psychologists and psychotherapists may search for studies to prepare a discussion with colleagues, explore a training topic, or check a statement. A focused question helps you recognise which papers deserve closer attention, without guaranteeing that an answer already exists. We will work through an entirely fictional educational example, without using real clinical cases.

Clarify what you want to know

“I want to learn more about psychology training” names a broad topic. It could involve students’ experiences, comparisons between teaching activities, or ways of assessing a skill. Choosing one of these tasks gives the search a direction.

Start with a provisional sentence: “I want to understand how learning to critically appraise articles has been studied.” Then note why the question matters to you. Perhaps you are preparing a teaching discussion with colleagues who support students. That purpose can guide your work, but it should not become an answer decided in advance.

Check your verbs. “Prove that exercises work” already contains a conclusion to defend. “Find out how exercises have been evaluated” leaves room for favourable, uncertain, or irrelevant findings. You can record your expectations while keeping them separate from the question you will use to select studies.

Define people, activities, and the desired result

In our fictional example, the group of interest is university psychology students. The activity involves guided exercises in critical appraisal. The desired result is the ability to identify methodological limitations in an article, as distinct from enjoying the course.

A first question might be: “Which studies have compared guided exercises with reading materials alone when assessing psychology students’ identification of methodological limitations?” This is a proposed literature-search question. It does not describe a study we have found or establish that the exercises are effective.

You can decide whether to specify a particular training level. If your interest concerns beginners, advanced students may be less relevant. If you are exploring the topic, you could keep the group broader and record the differences between the studies you retrieve. Avoid adding characteristics simply because they make the wording appear more precise.

Choose a structure that fits the question

The Cochrane chapter on formulating review questions presents PICO: population, intervention, comparison, and outcome. It is a useful framework for questions about intervention effects; individual elements can require different levels of precision.

You can recognise these four elements in our example without treating them as boxes that every question must fill. If you instead want to understand how students describe their difficulties reading studies, you are asking something different. A comparison between teaching activities may be unnecessary, and you would need studies suited to that purpose.

Reread your question and consider what kind of answer would be relevant. Do you need accounts of experiences, comparisons between groups, or information about how an ability is measured? If the sentence includes all these aims, choose the main one and keep the others for later exploration.

Separate the outcome from its indicator

“Learning to read better” still needs an explanation. In our example, the interest is in recognising a study’s limitations. One paper might use a task involving an unfamiliar article; another might ask students how prepared they feel.

These provide different kinds of information. You do not yet need to decide which measure is best in every situation. You need to understand what you are looking for, so that you do not treat findings answering different questions as equivalent. Describe the desired outcome in plain language and leave room to check how each study defines it.

Timing may also matter. Are you interested in performance immediately after the activity or in something assessed later? A time boundary should reflect your professional question. There is little value in adding an arbitrary duration simply to make the question longer or more elaborate.

Turn concepts into searchable terms

The complete question gives your reading a direction. Choosing what to type into a database takes another step. For this example, candidate terms might include psychology students, critical appraisal, and research literacy. Treat them as suggestions to check against sources and search results, rather than perfect synonyms or an already validated vocabulary.

The PubMed guidance on search operators explains AND and OR: one combines required concepts, while the other allows alternatives. In our example, you could explore the group and the educational topic separately before checking what appears when you combine them.

You do not need to copy every part of the question into the search string. The Cochrane chapter on search strategies warns that searching every element, including outcomes and comparisons, can exclude relevant studies. Your question can therefore remain precise while the initial search uses fewer concepts.

Refine the search while keeping its purpose

Read some titles and abstracts to see how authors describe the topic. If many results are irrelevant, consider which term is introducing a different meaning. If you find nothing, try a broader formulation or alternative wording, changing one element at a time.

Few results from an initial search do not establish that no studies exist. Your terms may be too restrictive, the database may be unsuitable, or the combination may miss the language used by authors. A search intended for a systematic review needs a dedicated process, potentially involving a librarian or information specialist.

Keep a note of the question, database, date, terms, and changes. Record why you replaced a word or broadened a group. This small search record can help you resume the work and discuss it with a colleague. It does not, by itself, make the search comprehensive or systematic.

AI can help you compare different formulations of the same question. You could ask: “Suggest two versions of this literature-search question. Keep the people, activity, and outcome unchanged. Point out missing information without inventing studies or anticipating the answer.” Then compare the suggestions with your purpose and check any proposed terminology.

PsyLab is a digital AI workspace for mental health professionals that includes Chat and Documents. If you use it to organise notes and possible formulations, keep the distinction between an AI suggestion and a choice checked by the professional. This preparation does not amount to a literature search validated by the app.

Start with an uncertainty, write a question, and try it against a few results, keeping the points needing revision visible. To explore AI support for preparing professional materials, you can try PsyLab for free.