EBSCOHost research databases

The default search mode for EBSCOHost research databases supports proximity searching. This means that if you are using the Basic Search option, your search query will automatically be processed using the proximity setting.

This setting not only allows you to search for two or more words, but to hone in on results where your search terms occur within a certain distance, or number of words, from each other. 

The default proximity distance when searching multiple terms is 5 words.

In practice, this means that if you search for child development education, your results will show you everything and anything where child, development, and education appear together with no more than 5 words between each term, regardless of the order that they appear. For example: 

• Education and the right to development of the child in northern Nigeria: A proposal for reforming the Almajiri Institution
• What are we teaching the teachers? Child development curricula in US higher education
• A double prevention: How maternal education can affect maternal mental health, child health and child cognitive development

It is also possible when searching to specify different proximity distances using two operators, w and n. In both cases, the operators are paired with a number indicating the new proximity distance (i.e. number of words).

Within operator (w#)

• a w# search requires that words appear within a certain distance of each other and in the order you type them in
• For example: LGBTQ w2 families would retrieve LGBTQ families; LGBTQ foster families; LGBTQ resource families, etc.

Near operator (n#)

• n# searches for words that are near each other, regardless of what order they are found in
• For example: Indigenous n8 child would retrieve child protection and the overrepresentation of Indigenous families; Indigenous traditional child rearing, etc. 

To search for an exact phrase, and not just a combination of words within a certain distance of each other, use double quotation marks around your query. For example,  "child abuse prevention" or "secondary traumatic stress."

Note that stop words - such as in, of, and the - are never searched for, even if enclosed in double quotation marks as part of a phrase search. Instead, stop words are treated as placeholders for any words that could be in their place.

For example, if you searched for "treatment of abuse", you could retrieve results related to post treatment drug abuse (where drug is taking the place of of in the search query). 

In most cases, stop words won't interfere with your searching but if you are having difficulty finding relevant results, you may want to employ proximity operators and boolean operators to further specify your search.

A list of stop words recognized by EBSCO databases can be found here.