Chapter 9 · Educational

Building a Precision Search

Early searches explore; late searches retrieve. Once you know the terms and the sources, your job shifts from discovery to precision — and here the Question Method pays off most directly, because a well-drafted question is a Boolean search waiting to be formatted.

Watch the funnel. Below is one research question. Step through the build and see each connector reshape the result set — widening first so you miss nothing, then tightening hard. Tap any bar to jump to that step.

The research question

Have Ninth Circuit courts held that remote work is a required reasonable accommodation under the ADA for employees with anxiety disorders?

Core concepts

reasonable accommodation · remote work · anxiety · (ADA)

Synonyms to expand

remote! telecommut! "work from home" · "mental health"

The relationship

accommodation should sit near remote work; anxiety must co-occur

The jurisdiction

Ninth Circuit — applied as a filter

Illustrative results — not a live search

The counts above are illustrative, chosen to show the shape of narrowing — this page isn’t querying a real database.

The precision connectors

Building on the core connectors from Chapter 2, these are the instruments that turn searching into narrowing. (Most databases share this syntax today — but always confirm the exact connectors in the database’s own help file before you rely on a search.)