Use wildcards (sometimes called truncation) whenever appropriate. The wildcard character is usually an asterisk.
Example: economic* will retrieve economics, econometric, etc.
Beware the "phrase-searching trap"! In many databases, you will get additional relevant hits by putting a proximity symbol or the connector AND between phrase words.
Example: In EBSCO databases, instead of "urban sprawl" try "urban n3 sprawl" [no quotes] to ALSO catch articles that write of sprawl in urban areas.
Full text may be available in another database, so be sure to click on the "Check for Full Text" link!