Research Guides: Introduction to Social Work Research: SSW 4396: Get Started

Top Resources

If you need background information or help narrowing a topic, use the background and references listed on the Social Work subject guide.

The benefits of using library database (login required) include having a controlled vocabulary (indexing or subject terms), advanced searching, browsing, and filtering results features, as well as saving search history and results.

Add "review OR meta" in the title for a systematic, scoping or other evidence synthesis review. Add "bibliography" to your search term to find bibliographies on a subject. Result for the terms "homeless* bibliography" in Library Search : Homelessness : An Annotated Bibliography
Select the appropriate methodology, subject, or review filter.
To search smarter and save time try the Ten Finding Tips.

Library Search (Articles)
Find articles via Temple University's Library Search, which searches through nearly all databases listed on this guide. Use the Peer-reviewed filter to limit to peer-reviewed journal articles.

Social Services Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Social Services Abstracts provides bibliographic coverage of current research focused on social work, human services, and related areas, including social welfare, social policy, and community development.
ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
Search the Social Science Premium Collection to do a combined search of all ProQuest social science databases. Disciplines covered include politics, public policy, sociology, social work, anthropology, criminology, linguistics, library science, and education. Searching here is convenient and saves time, though you do lose the advanced filtering capability of some of the individual databases.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Web of Science indexes core journal articles, conference proceedings, data sets, and other resources in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. It also includes access to EndNote Online.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Note: Follow these instructions to link Google Scholar with Temple's resources.
Google Scholar provides search for scholarly literature. It covers disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.
Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista provides access to quantitative facts by market sector, encompassing agriculture, finance, and politics, and others. Statista is a statistics portal that integrates thousands of diverse topics of data and facts from a wide range of sources onto a single platform. Sources of information include market research, trade publications, scientific journals, and government databases.
Sage Research Methods Online This link opens in a new window
Sage Research Methods Online provides content across the social and behavioral sciences. Covers quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods and includes the entire "Little Green Book" and "Little Blue Book" series.

Related Guides

Depending on your topic, other research guides may have an even more comprehensive list of relevant indexes and databases. Here are links to some that may be useful for social research. The Social Work guide has a section on Evidence-Based Practice.