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A nesting strategy is a way to bring back highly relevant results based on your research question.
Databases will read the information in the parenthesis first: using them then organizes how your search string is read and will change the results you retrieve.
Without nesting:
children AND "duct tape" AND warts AND cryotherapy
16 results
In this example, we are using our PICO keywords established earlier in this guide. Entering the terms straight into the search fields we get 16 articles back.
Here is a visual breakdown of the search:
With Nesting:
(children AND warts) AND ("duct tape" OR cyrotherapy)
20 results
However, we are going to adjust our search string to see if we can get additional articles that pertain to our subject. We are now also looking for articles that contain children +warts, and either "duct tape" or cyrotherapy. The articles may still contain both terms but we want to mainly see if we can get any additional articles with either single term back without running separate searches.
Here is a visual breakdown of the searches occurring simultaneously:
Without nesting:
"Avian flu" AND transmission OR infection
1.6 million results
In this example, the parenthesis was omitted. We are seeking out articles with the full term "avian flu," however the order of operations views the AND as a single unit, and the OR as an add on.
Here is a visual breakdown of the search:
With nesting:
"Avian flu" AND (transmission OR infection)
210 results
In this example, we are looking for articles that contain the full term "avian flu." We want articles containing the full term to also include either the word transmission or infection. The articles may contain both the terms, but will have at least one of them in reference to "avian flu".
Here is a visual breakdown of the searches occurring simultaneously:
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