EDUC 294A: Thesis Seminar-PLI

Top Three Databases.

The UC Libraries provide several index/databases for searching literature in education.  The three primary education databases are ERIC, Education Index, and Educational Research Abstracts (ERA).  Click the tabs above to find specific search tips for doing research with each database.  Also, find several related psychology, social science and language/literacy databases under the "More Databases" or "Psychology" tabs above.   Several of the related databases, such as PsycInfo, are searchable simultaneously with ERIC on the ProQuest platform.

ERIC, EdIndex and ERA all search for scholarly journal articles in education.  There is some overlap among them with respect to journal coverage; however, each indexes some journal titles not covered by the others. 

In addition, ERIC indexes Documents (known as "ERIC Documents") from hundreds of organizations producing education-related material. Document types include books, research syntheses, conference papers, technical reports, policy papers, and school district documents. Organizations providing non-journal content to ERIC include research foundations, federal and state agencies, policy organizations, university affiliates, and commercial publishers. 

ERA also searches ebooks and reference materials published by the Taylor & Francis Group, that includes Routledge, Psychology Press, CRC Press, and Garland Science,

Where to Find ERIC, EdIndex, and ERA.

All the primary education databases -  ERIC, Ed Index, and ERA - and PsycInfo are linked from the EDP Library's homepage.

"I'm writing a paper on World War II." 

Often students start their research with a very general topic, even though they may realize the topic is too large to deal with in a 10-15 page paper.  Faculty and librarians tell them, "You have to narrow this down."  But how do you narrow a topic?

Thought experiments to try:

• Think about your topic from the disciplinary perspective.  If you are in a sociology class, ask a sociological question about World War II, like "How did WWII affect women?"  If it's a political science class, your question might be something like "How did WWII affect presidential elections in the US?"

• Think about subsets or aspects of your topic.  Some good aspects are:
  • by place, such as a country or region
  • by time period, such as a century, decade or year 
  • by population, such as men, women, ethnic group, youth, children or elderly

You can combine these ideas, "What were the major impacts of WWII on women in France, in the decade after the war?"

Take a look at our brief tutorial on topic selection and narrowing. (Slides 5-9 of the tutorial deal with topic narrowing.)