Getting started writing a query can be quite daunting. However, as long as you can think of at least one way to describe your area of interest, we have some tips to help you explore legislation and quickly build up a solid list of keywords.
You can watch the video here which covers everything below except for the advanced tips. A table of contents follows so you can skip right to the idea you’d like to learn about.
Table of Contents for the video:
- Basics are at 0:00,
- Using titles and texts starts at 1:44,
- Adding and using the keyword column is covered at 3:33,
- Looking at specific sections of code starts at 5:44.
- Bonus advanced tips in text below
Basics
There are a few simple principles when writing a query. The basic idea is to come up with key words or phrases that bills you are interested in will contain. The rest of this post is about how to methodically figure out what those words are. But first, here’s how the search screen works. You can search on single words (like dyslexia or marijuana) or phrases (like “minimum wage” or “payday loan”). When you search for a phrase make sure you put it in quotes. You can also add a wildcard, an asterisk *, to the end of a word or phrase to search all possible endings of that word. So if you are searching about veterinarians you might want to search on veterinar* which will give you results for veterinary, veterinarian, veterinarians. Just put a space between your words and phrases.
Now let’s look at the different boxes on the query tab
Contains all: All words or phrases listed in this box must appear in the bill. You can switch the “all” to “near”, which still means all words must appear but that they also must be near each other (generally in the same sentence or section). Notice we’ve added grabby corners (highlighted by the orange arrow) so you can make the box bigger if you need to.
Contains any: At least one of the words or phrases in this box must appear in the bill. You can use this box in combination with the other boxes. So you can require a bill to have the word marijuana and then also require any of: medicinal “pain management”. That will give you marijuana bills that mention either medicinal marijuana or pain management.
Contains none: Any words in this box will disqualify a bill. You can use this box to filter out bills that don’t apply to you. For example, if I am looking at marijuana bills I might want to eliminate bills about hemp. You can also use the Contains none box to help make your queries mutually exclusive. Using the words in my example above, I might want to create a separate bill sheet for check cashing, and then put “check cashing” in the Contains none box on this query so that I don’t have to read the same bill twice.
Using titles and texts
To get started make a bill sheet with the most straightforward word or phrase you know for your topic. Then you can browse through the names of bills that come up looking for other terms that seem to apply. If you are getting no results, or wildly unexpected results, review the basics above to make sure you are using the “all of” and “any of” boxes correctly. If you are still having trouble just book a time to talk to us and we’ll figure it out together.
If you are on the right track you should have a number of bills in your sheet, many of which sound relevant. If you see any terms repeated in the titles of bills that seem relevant, go to the query tab and add them to your query. If you notice a certain type of bill coming up often that you aren’t interested in, try to figure out a term they all have in common and add that to the “none of” box, but only if you are sure that term will never appear in bills you do want.
You can also start reading bills that seem relevant by clicking on them and going to the “bill text” tab. If you click the highlight search terms checkbox you’ll go straight to the section of the bill relevant to you.
As you work through bills deciding if they are relevant, you may run into new terms. You can copy and paste these terms into your query.
Adding and using the keyword column (and possibly Summary column)
You may wish to review the keywords from all of your matching bills all at once and add all relevant words to your query before digging in and reading all of the bills. This is especially true if you are brand new to a topic and really need to build up your query, or if you are getting more misses than hits and want to find some words to help you refine your query.
Looking at specific sections of code
Another way to search for your topic may be to look for the specific statutes involved. Let’s say I am interested in Payday Loans. I enter some terms and find this bill, FL H1311 about Check Cashing Services. I notice it mentions “Section 560.304, Florida Statutes” as the specific law the bill proposed to change. I can google that phrase, figure out which is the government link, and find the law itself here about exempting certain check cashing situations from licensure. If this is exactly the kind of thing I want to keep track of, I can add “560.304” to my query. Notice on the Florida Statues page they make it easy for you to look at the whole chapter and see if other sections might be relevant to me so I can add those numbers to your search too. Note you’ll want to put numbers with symbols like . – / , in quotes so that our search engine doesn’t see the symbol as punctuation and remove it from your search. Adding “560.304” to my search finds this bill FL S1126, which seems quite relevant, but doesn’t have any of the keywords I was already using.
Unfortunately, “560.304” also catches some federal bills about Iranian Ballistic Missiles. Depending how much overlap your number has with other unrelated code in other states you may be ok with patiently x-ing out irrelevant bills. Or you can search for the whole phrase “Section 560.304, Florida Statutes” will work, but runs the risk of missing a bill mentioning “Sections 560.304 and 560.305”. Another option is to create a new bill sheet that searches Florida only, and all relevant Florida sections there. Exactly which route you take will depend on your search terms, how many statutes you need to follow, and what the states are like about your topic.
Searching by statute number is a reliable way to find changes to existing laws and can be a valuable addition to your searches. However to keep up with new laws being proposed you will also want to search for bills by keyword, too.
Advanced Tips for Evaluating Keywords
You may run across a term that seems useful, but you aren’t sure how often it comes up, or if it will actually add any relevant bills to your bill sheet. You may also wonder if it comes up in other contexts and will mess up your search. We can use the “none of” box to help us figure out what’s going on with a search term.
For my example of Payday Loans, I might wonder if ever refers to other situations besides payday lending. To find out I can cut the phrase “Check Cashing” from my “any of” box and put it in my “all of” box. Then I can cut all the remaining terms in my “any of” box and move them to my “none of” box.
This new search will turn up bills that mention check cashing but don’t say anything about payday loans or payday lending. If there are no results than “check cashing” always appears paired with the other terms, and doesn’t add any value to our search. If the resulting list is mostly relevant, then “check cashing” is an important phrase and I do want to add it to my search. If the resulting list is fairly mixed or even mostly irrelevant, then to avoid reading lots of irrelevant bills I probably want to create a new sheet searching for check cashing so that I can add more words specific to the check cashing search to narrow it down.
If I do create a “Check Cashing” bill sheet, then I might want to add “Check Cashing” to the “none of” box on my original bill sheet so that I don’t end up reading check cashing bills twice. Also, remember the “copy” button available at the bottom of the manage tab. If your sheet is against a certain list of states, or you’ve spent time setting up permissions for your sheet, or you have otherwise put effort into refining your sheet then the copy button can save you a lot of time by bringing all of those settings over to your new sheet. Then you can just copy and paste your terms as appropriate and you are ready to go.
Personally, I usually cut and paste terms I’m trying out right on my main bill sheet. You may find you prefer to create a working bill sheet where you run your experiments. Either way, using the none of box to help you figure out overlap is a great way to gain confidence in your terms.
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