SWU 320 Research Methods in Social Work

Find the librarian skilled in your research area. They can help you determine the best databases and resources for your topic.

Get acquainted with the Research Guide for your subject. This will supply descriptions and links for the major sources in your field.

The ASU Library provides a network of physical and virtual resources for your use. We have a comprehensive collection of databases for finding research articles. The research guides in your area and your subject librarian can help you find the best starting point. 

Our book collection contains both print and e-books. You can easily find both in our catalog.

Interlibrary Loan and Document  Delivery -  Don't find the item you need? Our Interlibrary Loan service can get it for you.

Search for dissertations that have been done on your topic before you begin your thesis or dissertation. The library provides a database called Proquest Dissertations and Theses which includes the full text of many doctoral dissertations from institutions in the United States and abroad.

JournalTOCs - Keep current with this searchable collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs). Sign up for alerts when new content is published. 

Selected Research Databases for Finding Scholarly Articles

Social Services Abstracts - Bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy and community development. The database abstracts and indexes over 1,500 serials publications and includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, and citations to book reviews

Sociological Abstracts - Covers theoretical & applied sociology, social science, & policy science. Topics include: sociological aspects of anthropology, gender studies, gerontology, family studies, health, racial interactions, social psychology, social work, urban studies, etc.

Criminal Justice Abstracts – This resource includes full text covering major journals in criminology and related disciplines, extensive coverage of books, access to reports from government and nongovernmental agencies, and includes an informative summary of the findings, methodology. The increasing globalization of criminology is reflected in Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text’s coverage of hundreds of journals from around the world.

Education Full Text - Covers education topics such as critical thinking, teaching methods, curriculum, comparative education, literacy standards, multicultural education, psychology, special education, counseling, teacher/parent relations, vocational education, etc.

PsycInfo - Indexes literature in psychology & related disciplines (sociology, linguistics, education, medicine, law, physiology, business, psychiatry, & anthropology). Covered are: journals, books, chapters, dissertations & technical reports.

PsycArticles - It contains full-text of articles from journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber. The database can also be searched for articles of interest by browsing directly through the journal titles and then clicking to the tables of contents for the respective volumes and issues.

PubMed - An Abstract/Citation Database, PubMed indexes citations for articles from MEDLINE and OLDMEDLINE as well as out-of-scope citations from additional general science and chemistry journals whose life sciences articles are indexed in MEDLINE. PubMed also indexes additional life science journal articles that submit full text to PubMed Central.

The yellow "Get it @ ASU" links or other full-text links within our databases should take you to the article if we have it. But if it doesn't, it's a good idea to check further. There's a good chance that we might still have the article you need. There are several ways that you can do this:

Search the title of the article in Google Scholar. If you put the title of the article in quotation marks into the search box it will be a little more specific, but that's not always necessary. Usually just a simple cut and paste will work. Use the "get it @ ASU" links within Google Scholar to take you to the article. 

Search the title of the article in Library One Search. Same procedure as above. Note that this will only find the article if ASU has it, so it's more limiting than a Google Scholar search.

If those methods don't work, you can make a final check using our our Journal Title Lookup feature to lead you to the volumes of that particular journal that we have access to online.

These are also the methods you can use to find an article if you have gotten a reference from another source, such as a bibliography, and already know the citation information (journal name, volume number, date, etc.).