Search Syntax

Background: When you specify a search, you need to find the right balance between precision and recall. If you specify a "precise" (very specific and restricted) search, you will get fewer matching articles, and so if your search criteria is right, you have the article(s) you want and fewer articles that aren't of interest.. On the other hand, if your search isn't exactly right, you may not find the article(s) or concepts you are looking for. A broader search increases recall, which means the results are more inclusive. You will have more to look through, but the result you are looking for may be more likely to be there. Different query or search strategies yield different "ratios" of precision and recall.

Rules for Searching

Examples:

transference and countertransference	Both words must be present
transference or countertransference	Either word can be present
transference and not countertransference	Only transference must be present
transference w/5 countertransference	Transference must occur within 5 words of countertransference
transference not w/5 countertransference	Transference must not occur within 5 words of countertransference

Note: If you use more than one operator, you should use parentheses to indicate precisely what you want to search for (see precedence rules below).

Use the AND operator in a search request to connect two expressions, both of which must be found in any document retrieved. For example, to search for documents containing the word countertransference and the word transference, type countertransference and transference in the keyword input box. A more complicated search: (transference or countertransference) and (enactment w/5 process) would retrieve any document that (1) contained either transference OR countertransference, AND (2) contained enactment within 5 words of process.

Use the OR operator in a search request to connect two expressions, at least one of which must be found in any document retrieved. To search for documents containing either the word "countertransference" or the word "transference," type countertransference or transference in the keyword input box.

Use NOT to narrow your search by excluding a term you may not want. If you type positive transference in the top keyword input box and negative transference in the second dialog box, your search will return only those documents that include the words "positive transference" and exclude the words "negative transference."

Use quotation marks around a phrase to search for an exact match of those words in sequence. For example, to find the phrase "positive transference" type "positive transference" in the keyword input box, including the quotation marks. Without the quotation marks, your search will return documents containing the word "positive" and the word "transference," even if the words are not used together.

Use wildcard * (asterisk) for multiple endings. By typing an * (asterisk symbol) at the end of a word, you can search for items with multiple endings. For example, typing interp* in the keyword input box will return documents that include the words "interpret" "interpreter," "interpreting," "interprets," and "interpreted."
Use a question mark (?) as a wildcard for a single character. By typing a question mark symbol (?) anywhere within a term, any character (numeric or letter) will match in that position.

Dictionary Based Operators

You can also take advantage of several dictionary type operators to improve recall in your searches. This includes "stemming" (all forms of a word, including irregular forms) and thesaurus (synonym) based lookups.
To use stemming, take one form of the word and add a ~ (tilde) at the end. For example, a search for applied~ would also find applying, applies, and apply.

Thesaurus

To further enhance search recall, PEP has incorpoated an industry specific thesaurus into the site. Use the thesaurus suffix ampersand (&) to expand the effect of the search term to include conceptual synonyms. If you wrote the word paranoia&, you find articles containing words matching paranoia or synonyms of paranoia such as anxiety, suspicion, fear, mistrust, apprehension.

Note: The PEP Thesaurus function had not yet implemented on PEP Web as of 2006-05-11, but should be available soon.

Proximity Searches

Proximity Searches allow you to search for terms which fall within a specific number of words from each other.

Search by Fields

PEP Web is set up with multiple fields such as Author, Year, Article, Para, Reference, etc. Additionally, the "Or, And or Not" logical operators are also displayed on the search screen to further help limit your searches. The default search will look for your word or phrase within the full text and fields of the documents. If you would like to search for a specific field, you may enter those values in that field's search boxes.

Note: For simple word combination searches (and/or) using the Article radio button is less useful than using Para, unless you wanted to find an article talking about two concepts as they wouldn't necessarily be in the same paragraph or even near each other. When you try to exclude a concept from a search, using "Not", the article radio button is more specific, since it would exclude that concept from the entire article.

Important Note: Para search is actually "approximated" by requiring that the search terms are within 25 words of each other. They may, however, actually be in different paragraphs.

Search Year

Year field may be a specific year, or a range.

The default search does not set limits according to year. You can narrow a search by year or year range by selecting from the drop down menu. Choose "Anytime," "Since," "Before," or "Between" and indicate a month, day, or year.

List of search operators

Term	Function	How to Use	Example
AND	Finds one term and a second term	Separate the words with a space, or separate with "and"	Chronic hypochondria Polymer blue; polymer and blue
" "	Finds terms in an exact sequence	Use quotation marks around the sequence	"chronic hypochondria" "polymer and blue"
OR	Finds one term or another term	Separate terms with "or"	House or Senate hypochondria or feigning
NOT	Finds one term but not another	Separate terms with "not"	House not Senate Hypochondria not chronic
* (asterisk)	Finds any terms starting with a specific sequence of letters	Type the letters, followed by an asterisk symbol (*)	Work psychoanal* matches psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic, psychoanalyst, ...
?	Finds variations of a term	Replace letters with the ? symbol	wom?n returns woman, women
w/	Finds terms that are within a certain number of words of each other	Separate words with a "w" and a slash mark (/) and the number of words which can occur between the search terms	smoke w/5 transference w/5 aggressive tobacco finds "smoke transference " and "tobacco aggressive " within 5 words of each other (in either order)
& (ampersand)	Finds variations of a term using an industry thesaurus	Place the & at the end of the word.	trauma& Finds all documents matching trauma and all synonyms as derived from an industry dictionary (Klumpner)
~ (tilde)	Stemming (word forms)	Place the ~ at the end of one of the word forms	apply~ returns matches for apply, applies, applied
%%	Fuzzy (imprecise) matching	Place % in the middle of the word, strting where you want the imprecision. The number of % signs you include determines the number of characters which can differ from the specified word and still constitute a match.	psycho%%%%analysis matches psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic, psychoanalytical, ...
~~ (double tilde)	Range	Place ~~ between two numbers representing the outside of the range	10~~20 returns matches for any number between 10 and 20, inclusive.

Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word will slow searches somewhat.

Note: With PEP Web, when the radio buttons "And", "Or", or "Not" are selected, two Search by Word or Phrase dialog boxes display, which allows the search to be further refined according by selecting any of the fields (Article, Para, Dreams, etc.) displayed in the PEP Web Search Criteria screen.