The easiest way to search is to use the Advanced Search to form a search string on your topic. Start with a question, then break the question into the most relevant nouns, and put them in individual blanks. On the left you can combine AND, NOT and OR to narrow (AND) and broaden (OR) your search. On the right, you can focus your search to specific fields like AUTHOR, TITLE, or SUBJECT. The feature give you alot of control over how the search is processed!
Put phrases in the same blank with quotations. This will made sure only results with both words in the phrase are returned.. Academic Search Complete has a built in phrase search that is pretty efficient, but it's a good idea to use quotes anyway as a general practice for using database phrase searching because it varies from tool to tool, and is not always exact without them.
For example, if you perform a search with and without quotes, you will usually notice you get a few less results when quotes are used. Adjust the Boolean terms at the ends of the search blanks to broaden or narrow your search.