SWU420: Practice Oriented Research
Contact Joe Buenker, Social Work Librarian
Note: an additional SWU 420 web-page provides a brief list of recommended databses and free web-sites.
| Pre-Searching Preparation · Identifying Articles · Identifying Library Books · Identifying Assessment Measurements |
Pre-Searching Preparation
Keep in mind that effective research is an iterative and time-consuming process. Identifying the most relevant resources on a topic is going to take planning, refining and plenty of practice.
The following suggestions are offered to encourage you to think about your research project prior to going online:
- Don’t jump into it blindly. Make sure that you have a good sense of what you are looking for prior to beginning your searching.
- Take time to plan your search process (until you can write-out a topic sentence and identify your major search concepts, you have not developed a solid search process).
- Do background reading so that you are more familiar with the scope of a topic (see subject-specific encyclopedias in the Reference Collection).
- Focus your topic. Consult your professor to make sure that you have adequately narrowed the scope of your research topic.
- Keep a journal or log to track which resources (databases, books, web-sites) you have searched and which search strategies you used within those resources/tools.
- Know the differences between (planned) research and (unplanned) retrieval.
- Research requires intelligent pre-planning, critical thinking and decision-making about resources throughout the process as well as the use of numerous appropriate search tools.
- Keep in mind that the resources you select 1) send a message to your professor about how much critical thinking and judgment you used and 2) that poor-quality or largely irrelevant sources will make the writing of your research paper much more difficult.
Identifying Articles
Make sure to to advantage of the Library's Database Finder. This tool will retrieve the most relevant journal article indexes and other resources for social work research.
Connect to the Recommended Social Work Resources.
- Recommended Subject Terms or Descriptors for Searching Social Work Abstracts
- Accountability
- Behavioral-intervention
- Case-management
- Clients
- Clinical practice
- Curriculum
- Decision-making
- Evaluation
- Field education
- Field instruction
- Fieldwork
- Intervention
- Interviews
- Learning
- Methodology
- Outcomes
- Planning
- Preventive-intervention
- Professional development
- Program evaluation
- Research
- Social work education
- Social work practice
- Training
- Treatment
- Treatment-effectiveness-evaluation
- Treatment outcomes
Identifying Library Books
Sample Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSHs)
Abused women -- Services for
Evaluation research (Social action programs)
Family Violence -- United States
Health risk assessment
Public health -- Arizona
Social indicators
Social work education
- Additional relevant LCSHs are hyperlinked on the Finding Books social work page.
Identifying Assessment Measures
Resources for Identifying Assessments and Tests
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