Followership: Search Words, Strings, and Hedges

How can followership discourses be sustained and advanced over time?

Search Terms, Search Strings, and Search Hedges

What Is A Search Hedge?

The concept of a "search hedge" is easiest to introduce by first defining "search terms" and "search strings".

Search Terms

The most basic building block for using a search engine are the "search terms", or the words or phrases used to specify the information the user is trying to obtain. These are generally keywords related to the user's area of interest.

Search Strings

Many search engines allow users to combine "search terms" into longer queries using Boolean operators like AND or NOT, quotation marks to request specific language in a specific order, and other techniques designed to add complexity or specificity to a search. The language that results from combining search terms with these additional operators is called a "search string".

Search Hedges

In research settings, creating search strings that yield appropriate results for complex combinations of topics across multiple academic databases can be challenging and time-consuming. "Search hedges" are prefabricated search strings that librarians and other information professionals build to help researchers hone in on their specific areas of interest. By aggregating the most accurate combinations of search terms and operators to yield the best possible results within a given database, a search hedge saves researchers the time and labor of having to construct their own complex search strings for each topic.

Within the context of this followership collection, our goal is to make followership resources visible and accessible on as many popular academic search databases as possible. It is our hope that researchers will be able to use this search hedge to not only identify general resources about followership, but combine it with search hedges from other academic fields to identify interdisciplinary research about followership in specific workplace settings or academic disciplines.

An Example Search Hedge

An Example of Search Hedges In Action

The Search Strategies Working Group (SSWG) of the Animal and Veterinary Information Specialists Caucus of the Medical Library Association created a series of search hedges on Environmental Enrichment in Mice in collaboration with the Animal Welfare Information Center (AWIC). Because laboratory mice are the animal most commonly used in biomedical research, the SSWG felt it was important to help researchers easily find information on enriching their environments. Improving the mice's general welfare not only improves their quality of life, but also minimizes the potential of research being complicated by variable levels of stress.

These hedges can be downloaded from SSWG's Open Science Foundation page and are available for many databases, including PubMed, Ovid Medline, Ovid Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus. Here is how they may be cited, per Elizabeth Tobey at the USDA's National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, MD:
 
AVIS Search Strategies Working Group. 2024. Hedges on Environmental Enrichment for Mice. AVIS Search Strategies Working Group Hedges. Open Science Foundation. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/JY2HB.

Search Hedges on Followership

A Search Hedge for Followership Research

The team behind this digital collection has constructed the following search hedge to assist researchers in searching for additional scholarly research on followership:
(followership OR leadership) AND (follower outcome* OR follower role* OR follower style* OR follower typ* OR "upward leadership" OR "shared leadership" OR "transformational leadership" OR "leader-member exchange" OR "managing your boss")

Additional Information About This Search Hedge

  • The followership search hedge was created in April of 2025 and primarily tested in EBSCO Business Source Complete, ProQuest One Business, Scopus, and Web of Science. It was last updated on April 30th, 2025.
  • Because followership is an emerging discipline, it is reasonable to expect that the concepts and vocabulary in followership literature will evolve in the coming years. While this search hedge captures a significant amount of followership research at the time of its creation, researchers using it in the future should be mindful of how the field may have evolved in ways that affect the hedge's efficacy.
  • The research abstracts found in the annotated bibliography for this LibGuide include keywords for each article. These keywords may be a good starting point for users interested in applying additional refinement to updated iterations of this search hedge.
  • We encourage researchers to use this hedge with attribution in their own research. A recommended citation for this resource guide can be found on the "About This Project" tab.