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Social Work Research II: Getting Started

Welcome to Social Work Research II

Welcome to Social Work Research II

This is a guide for using library resources to find information for your Social Work Research II final assignment as required for effective evidence-based practitioners.  .

Your research involves the questions:

  1. What is the specific question or problem?  Formulate a PRACTICE Question that you can research.
    • Use PICO (see link below)
  2. What type of information/literature are you looking for?
    • Evidence Based Practice (Qualitative/Quantitative/Systematic Reviews/Meta Analysis/Controlled Trials)
  3. What kinds of publications will you be using?
    • Evidence based, peer-reviewed research journal articles (Social Work Databases, Cochrane, PSychINFO,  MedLine, PubMed, and other databases identified in this guide)

The resources on the following pages were selected because they are useful for social work research.  The resources include scholarly books, e-books, and article databases that contain academic peer-reviewed journals, reports, and authoritative websites.

  • Your faculty member only wants to see valid, reliable, authoritative, sources for your research.  That means sources written by experts or scholars who have credentials in the field that they are writing about.
  • Google and Wikipedia are usually not the best place to start.  Keep in mind Google will give you thousands of hits but many will not be academically sound. Wikipedia is great for an overall outline of a topic, but content may not be authoritative.  Google Scholar, however, can be most useful.