Research Guides: Social Work 440: Databases to Search

Key Databases in Social Work

Sociology Collection (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Explore scholarly articles in sociology and related fields.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Searches scholarly books and articles on psychology-related topics.
Encyclopedia of Social Work This link opens in a new window This continually updated edition is a collaboration between the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and Oxford University Press. Provides over 400 entries on social work topics ranging from international practices to ethical standards.

Other Databases to Try

Academic Search Premier This link opens in a new window
This multi-disciplinary database indexes over 13,000 journals and provides full-text for 4,700 journals.
Criminology Collection This link opens in a new window
Includes the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Abstracts and some full-text coverage of scholarly journals in criminal justice, law enforcement, and related fields.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new window
Examines social issues from a variety of sources: pro and con viewpoint articles; full-text articles from magazines, academic journals, and newspapers; statistics and more.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 18 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to 1948.
Scopus This link opens in a new window
Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings. You may set up a free account to: 1) save your searches; 2) set up email alerts; 3) save documents to lists; and 4) review your author profile.
Scopus is a good starting point for finding articles on almost any topic. It contains over 47,000,000 records to scholarly publications, trade publications and conference proceedings. Scopus is an excellent database for cited reference searching. It does not contain full text articles, but users can get access to full text by using the Get It button.
Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista aggregates statistical data on over 600 international industries from more than 18,000 sources, including market researchers, trade organizations, scientific journals, and government databases.
Taylor & Francis Online This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text access to over 2,100 journal titles published by Taylor & Francis back to 1997. This e-journal collection is made available through the shared efforts of the University of Nebraska Consortium of Libraries (UNCL)

Building a Better Search

As you begin your research, you will need to work on narrowing your topic.

Try combining terms to narrow your search results, eg, "immigrant AND children AND detention"

Using "AND" in between your search terms will narrow your search results.

Using "OR" will expand your search results, eg, "immigrant OR child"

Try using the * symbol at the end of root words to include the variety of representations in your results. Searching for "adolesc*" will include adolescent and adolescence in your results.

Finally, all of the databases provide facets or filter to narrow your search results. Try applying facets to narrow the publication date ranges, the article type, or publication titles in which the article appears.

Need Background on a Topic?

The Encyclopedia of Social Work by Terry Mizrahi; Larry E. Davis
Call Number: ONLINE (unlimited users)
ISBN: 0195310365
Publication Date: Continuously Updated
See: "Adolescents: Demographics and Social Issues" and "Adolescents: Pregnancy"

Primo Search

Suggested Search Terms

"alcohol use" OR "alcohol abuse" OR "drinking of alcoholic beverages"
"drug use" OR "drug abuse" OR "substance abuse"
"high school dropouts"
"sexual behavior"
homeless* OR runaway

Social Work 440

Subject Guide

Class Session Links