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SOCW 4362 Social Research

This guide is intended to help students learn basic research skills for the SOCW 4362 Social Research Course.

Search Social Work Abstracts, CINAHL, and PsycINFO Simultaneously

Developing Keywords

Think about your research question and how you want to answer it.

Identify the main components of your topic and question and isolate those to keywords. Write those keywords down. From there you can identify synonyms to search in the event your core keywords do not bring enough relevant results.

Boolean Operators

 

The above Database uses Boolean Operators and search terms to find articles.

Boolean Operators are AND, OR, NOT. Multiple operators can be used at once.

When using Boolean Operators it is important to remember:

AND means;

  1. All selected search terms must be present in the article results,
  2. Narrows your search results to the selected search terms.

Example: "Social Work" AND "Ethics" will result in a search of articles that ONLY have both terms present in the title/abstract.

OR means;

  1. Either selected search term may be present in article results,
  2. Expands your search results to include articles with EITHER search term.

Example: "Social Work" OR "Ethics" will result in a search of articles with either search term present in the title/abstract. Not all articles retrieved will be relevant to your topic and/or research question.

NOT means;

  1. The second search term will be exclude from the search results,
  2. Refines your search results

Example: "Social Work" NOT "Ethics" will result in a search of articles on Social Work that do not include/discuss the topic of Ethics in Social Work. Articles could include Social Work care practice implementation in rural areas, or Social Work innovative practices.

AND to search for multiple terms i.e.evidence AND admissibility will produce documents that contain both terms.
OR to search for either one of a pair of similar terms i.e. brief OR evidence will produce documents that contain either of these terms
NOT to exclude a term from a search i.e. evidence NOT briefs will exclude every search result containing the word "briefs"
" " use quotes to search for a phrase i.e. "love canal" will search for documents containing the exact phrase "love canal"
( ) to search grouped clauses to form sub queries i.e. (watershed OR "water rights") AND planning will produce documents that contain either watershed or water rights and planning
~ to search for words within a particular proximity of each other i.e. "watershed planning"~10 will search for watershed within 10 words of planning
? to search for words where there may be variations of the word that you want included in your search i.e. te?t will produce documents that contain text or test
* to search for a word with multiple character differences i.e. brief* will return searches with the words brief, briefs, and briefed

Databases & Scholarly Articles

Library Databases may contain:

  • scholarly articles
  • newspapers or magazines
  • images or historical documents
  • full-text books

Scholarly Articles

Scholarly articles:

  • are written, reviewed, and edited by experts,
  • refer to work by other scholars

Learn more evaluating scholarly articles

Other Databases with Relevant Content

Evaluate Resources

When evaluating resources, focus on currency, revevance, authority, accuracy, and perspective

Click image for more information

Interlibrary Loan

Found or need information (e.g. articles, books, etc.) that we don't have access to? You can get it via Interlibrary Loan Details (ILL).

WTAMU students, faculty, staff, and Friends of Cornette Library (Supporting level and above) can use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to borrow research materials from the collections of other libraries.

ILL Office hours are Monday-Friday 8AM to 5PM. Contact the Interlibrary Loan department at (806) 651-2406.

Delivery could take as little as a couple of days or as much as three weeks. See here for more information about Interlibrary Loan. Click here for our ILL FAQs. For our Interlibrary Loan policies, click our Library policies section, then select Interlibrary Loan.

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Subjects: PSYC/SOCI/SOCW