7 Stage 4: Search Iteratively
7.1 Orientation
A search is not a box into which a finished question is typed. It is a sequence of encounters with the vocabulary and organization of a field. The first results teach the researcher how other actors named the subject. Those names alter the next search.
7.2 Learn
Begin with a search cycle rather than a master query. A cycle has a purpose, a route, a date, a set of terms, and a result. It ends with a decision: continue, revise, follow a lead, or stop using that route.
Search across systems because each system orders the world differently. Scholarly indexes privilege publications and citation relations. Archive catalogues describe collections through institutional finding aids. General search engines rank pages through opaque and changing systems. Library catalogues preserve controlled vocabularies. Human experts reveal sources that no public index exposes.
Record failures. A query that returns nothing may show that the vocabulary is wrong, the source is not digitized, the archive uses another name, or the record never existed. These possibilities have different consequences. “No results” is not yet “no evidence.”
Search reporting standards developed for systematic reviews offer a useful discipline: name the information source, preserve the search strategy, record dates, and explain how retrieved records were managed.1 Qualitative projects can adapt this discipline without claiming that every search can be reproduced exactly.
7.3 Worked Example
The terrorism example begins with official database documentation and the scholarship that has tested its classifications. It then moves backward toward originating sources and sideways toward competing databases, government records, and local reporting. Citation chaining identifies studies that transformed the data. Name and event searches reveal changes in terminology.
The log distinguishes a result derived from the database from a result that independently documents the event. This prevents a chain of later publications from being mistaken for multiple sources.
A fragment of the log shows three cycles for the database source family.
| Cycle | System | Terms | Result | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GTD codebook and START site | inclusion criteria, domestic, transnational | Definitional thresholds and collection history located | Continue; extract coding rules |
| 2 | Scholarly index | GTD, coding change, undercount | Studies testing the classification retrieved | Follow citations backward |
| 3 | News archive | event name, place, date range | Contemporary report of a coded event | Retain as independent trace, not database-derived |
Each row records whether a result independently documents an event or derives from the database.
7.4 Try It
Run three short cycles for one source family. The first uses the researcher’s terms. The second uses language found in the first results. The third uses the vocabulary of an actor with a different institutional position. Write a short decision note after each cycle. Each note states one of four choices, with a reason: continue, revise the terms, follow a lead, or stop using the route.
7.5 Guided AI Workflow
Ask a model to expand candidate terms across historical names, acronyms, translations, institutional titles, and opposing actor vocabularies. The model can expand a query set. It cannot report what an index contains unless it has inspected the current index. A usable prompt: “Expand these search terms across historical names, acronyms, translations, and opposing actors’ vocabulary. Mark any proper noun I must verify.”
Permitted input: Concepts, existing search terms, and source-family names, with no protected information.
Do not provide: Restricted archival detail, participant identities, or partner-owned data.
Verify: Confirm every proposed proper noun before use, and test each term in an appropriate system.
Record: Log terms that entered or left the query set, the query effect, and the model and date.
7.6 Integrity Checkpoint
Searches may reveal personal data, allegations, and material obtained outside its intended context. Discovery does not establish ethical permission to collect, analyze, or publish. Confirm before saving:
Permission separate from discovery: finding material is not treated as permission to collect or publish it.
Restrictions recorded at discovery: any access or use restriction is noted at the moment the record is found.
Sensitive material quarantined: personal data or allegations found in passing are set aside, not folded into the corpus without review.
7.7 Save the Artifact
Save search-ai-audit-log-v0.1.xlsx. Required fields for each cycle are date, system, purpose, exact terms, filters, result count when meaningful, records retained, new vocabulary, and next decision. Preserve exports when licensing permits.
7.8 Advanced Practice
Search ranking changes. Personalized systems may return different results to different users. Researchers working in teams should compare selected queries across accounts, locations, languages, and systems when ranking itself could shape the corpus.