Researching with AI tools
Would you like to find out more about AI tools and their use in source research or prompting? Then you've come to the right place
Although text-generating tools such as ChatGPT cannot be used for direct source research, they can support the preparation of the research and thus contribute to a faster and better research result. For example by
- finding suitable search terms (synonyms, related terms, translations) for the topic or research question
- meaningful truncation of the search terms
- Linking the search terms with Boolean operators
- Automatic creation of a search string
Text-generating AI can go through all four steps at once even faster using the "building blocks" search method:
Prompt from the example:
For a literature search on the topic ["INSERT TOPIC"] I would like to use the research method Building Blocks. Please first explain to me what the research method is all about. Then go through the following steps one by one:
#Identify the key terms of my topic
#Divide the topic or research question into blocks based on the key terms
#Find synonyms and related terms for each key term and present it in a table (one column for each block)
#Trunk all terms found in step 3 meaningfully in a table
#Link the words in each column with an OR, each block has round brackets and the Boolean operator AND is used between the brackets. Give me a search string that contains everything.