One of my users wanted to run his rapid scoping review search as one line because of a bad experience with line-by-line searching. I cautioned him that it would be harder for me to parse due to the complexity. He sent me this search in ProQuest ERIC:
((ABSTRACT(plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 ABSTRACT(classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND (ABSTRACT(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning")) OR (TITLE(plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 TITLE(classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND (TITLE(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning"))) PEER(yes) AND pd(20130701-20230701)
I thought the parentheses looked a little unbalanced, used balancebraces.com to see where they might be missing, and came up with:
(((abstract(plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 abstract(classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND abstract(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning")) OR ((title(plant* OR green* OR biophilic OR biophilia OR natur*) NEAR/4 title(classroom* OR school* OR college* OR universit* OR student*)) AND title(focus* OR attention OR "executive functioning"))) AND (PEER(yes) AND pd(20130701-20230701))
To my surprise, both searches return 806 results. Are neither of us wrong? Are both of us wrong? Is one of us doing this better than the other? The intent is to search the abstract or title for the green/nature set within 4 words of the classroom/school set and to contain a mention of the attention set anywhere in those fields.
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Amber Prentiss (she/her)
Research and Instruction Librarian
UGA Zell B. Miller Learning Center
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