Social Work

Library Research and Searching Techniques

Key Scholarship Resources

For articles on various aspects of social work practices, check out these databases:

Social Services Abstracts (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Indexes over 1,500 serial publications focused on social work, human services, social welfare, social policy, and community development. Includes abstracts of journal articles and dissertations, as well as citations to book reviews.
Social Work Abstracts (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts articles from more than 450 journals in all areas of social work, including theory and practice, areas of service, social issues, and social problems. Also includes access to The Register of Clinical Social Workers, a directory of clinical social workers in the United States that contains contact information, education and employment history, and practice and licensing information. Dates of Coverage: 1977 to the present Updated: Quarterly

For research on social issues

SocINDEX with Full Text (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Indexes and abstracts nearly 2,000 journals in all subdisciplines of sociology, over 300 of which have full text.
Family Studies Abstracts (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Indexes material crelated to family studies, including marriage, divorce, family therapy, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. The index contains more than 53,500 records, which are carefully selected from the most important sources within the disciplines.

For research on psychological issues and mental health

PsycINFO (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Covers professional and academic literature in psychology and related disciplines. Contains over two million citations and summaries of articles from journals, books, book chapters, dissertations, and technical reports. Includes links to full-text articles available from ProQuest Psychology Journals and PsycArticles. Dates of Coverage: 1872 to the present
Chicano Database (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Provides bibliographic citations to materials focused on the Mexican-American and Chicano experience, as well as the broader Latino experience of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans and Central American immigrants from 1992 onwards. Selectively indexes content from journals, newspapers, books, book chapters and more. Subjects covered include art, bilingual education, education, health, labor, language, literature, mental health, and politics.

For research on Traumatic Stress

PTSDpubs (formerly PILOTS) This link opens in a new window
Covers the Published International Literature On Traumatic Stress. Includes citations to literature on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health sequelae of traumatic events, without disciplinary, linguistic, or geographical limitations. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Also freely available through U.S. Veterans Affairs.

For research into all aspects of education

ERIC (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
ERIC indexes articles and reports about all aspects of education. Two types of documents can be found in ERIC. Those marked EJ are journal articles. You can get to the full text of many of these articles by clicking on the Full Text link near the title of the article or by clicking on Find It @ UTSA. Those marked ED can be found in full text by copying the EDxxxx number and pasting that into Google.

To search across all the scholarly literature

Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. This link goes to a custom Google Scholar search that links to UTSA resources. For the standard version please visit https://scholar.google.com

These journal collections provide a different sort of search capability: You can search the full text of the articles.

Health and Social Care in the Community (online)
Health and Social Care in the Community is an essential journal for anyone involved in nursing, social work, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, general practice, health psychology, health economy, primary health care and the promotion of health.
Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness
Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness (SDH) is an international publication of original, peer-reviewed papers on psychosocial distress and homelessness throughout society. The Journal publishes original research papers, theoretical papers, review papers, brief reports, review articles, and special issues. The Journal is designed for professionals in the behavioral, medical, psychological, and social sciences.
Social service review (Online)
Social Service Review features balanced, scholarly contributions from social work and social welfare scholars and from members of the various allied disciplines engaged in research on human behavior, social systems, social structure, history, public policy, and social services.
Addiction Research & Theory (2001 - current)
Since being founded in 1993, Addiction Research and Theory has been the leading outlet for research and theoretical contributions that view addictive behaviour as arising from psychological processes within the individual and the social context in which the behaviour takes place as much as from the biological effects of the psychoactive substance or activity involved.

Many of the databases listed in the previous tabs will lead you to the full-text of the articles. You will see a link that says Full Text or PDF. Some, though, will only provide bibliographic information and an abstract. There are different steps to take depending on what you see.

Find It @ UTSA button

Click on the Find It @ UTSA button next to the citation in the database. This will take you to our interlibrary loan service ILLiad. ILLiad will search our online holdings and, if we have access to the article online, will provide you with a link.
If Find It @ UTSA does not give you a direct link to the article, copy and paste the title of the journal into Summon and change the search to journal article. If we have online access to the journal, you will see a link in the Summon record.
If we do not have online access to the article, you can request that we get you a copy via ILLiad. From the library's home page, click on the Get It For Me link, sign in, and click on Article/Conference Paper under New Request. The article will be scanned and sent to your online UTSA Libraries account (see below).

Get It For Me button

Click on the Get It For Me button next to the citation in the database. One of two actions will occur. If a screen asking you for your email address appears, enter your email address, read and agree to the Terms and Conditions, and select Accept. This is a copyright clearance procedure and allows the article to be delivered, via email, in 8 hours or less.
If the email screen does not appear, you will be taken to a screen that says YOU SEARCHED FOR followed by bibliographic information regarding your article.
Under NEED HELP?, click Get it For Me. You will be directed to a screen that requests your abc123 and passphrase. Login.
You will see a prepopulated request form. Unless you need to add any extra information or comments, scroll down and click submit. The article will be scanned and automatically sent to your online UTSA Libraries account.

Research tips

Research papers are those you will write for classes that review and discuss existing scholarship, scholarly literature, and academic articles.

What makes up an academic article?

They are formal research reports written by researchers. Academic articles follow an established format that consists of:

Addressing a problem
Writing a problem statement
A review of the relevant existing research
A statement of methodology, including the characteristics of the population to be studied. It also includes the method of data collection and analysis of the data.
The results
Discussion of the results
Addressing the Limitation of the Study
(optional) Including Future Work

References support all scholarly work and published research.

These articles are published in research publications only after blind peer-review. A blind peer-review means that other researchers in the same field assess the article submitted for review.

The reviewers do not know who wrote the article, and the author(s) of the article do not know who reviewed it, thus a "blind" review.
The reviewers evaluate the article for the quality of the research and its value as a contribution to the field,
They can recommend publication, suggest it not be published, or suggest revisions.

Finding academic articles

The best way of finding relevant articles for your papers is by searching relevant databases or Google Scholar.
You must identify the keywords for your search. As you do your searching, you might find better or more accurate keywords in article titles or abstracts. Thus modifying your search is part of the process.
When you find relevant articles, read the reference list or bibliography. Since the authors are required to review the relevant research, they have already gathered previous articles on the same and related subjects.
You can access the full-text of the article by clicking on the link that says Full Text or PDF. You can then print the article, email it to yourself, or save it to your computer or flash drive.
You can download or email the citation to yourself. Be sure to edit the citation to fit APA style for your reference list.
If you are using bibliographic management software, you can export the citation directly to that program.