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Do you need funding for you research, your dissertation or thesis? Check out our page of funding resources for graduate students in the social sciences.
Forward Citations
If an article is a few years old, but relevant to your topic, it can be very helpful to see who has cited it. There are several different ways to do this, and the results will overlap -- no single method is comprehensive.
ISI Web of Science contains the Social Science Citation Index which allows you to do a "Cited Reference" search. This shows other articles (from a prestigious list of peer reviewed journals) which have cited the target article, and it also shows the references for the the original article... both forward and backward citation.
Google Scholar also provides forward citations for some articles. It has a broader range of documents included (not just peer reviewed journals, but reports, pre-prints, etc.) and doesn't eliminate self citation or de-duplicate the results.
Cited Reference links are sometimes provided for articles indexed indatabases such as Social Services Abstracts, ERIC, EconLit, PsycInfo, etc.
Find Dissertations
Find Dissertations by searching Dissertations and Theses (Dissertation Abstracts) Full Text, which indexes graduate dissertations from over 1,000 North American, and selected European, graduate schools and universities from 1861 to the present. Dissertations published since 1980 include brief abstracts written by the authors and some feature 24-page excerpts. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and some full text coverage for older graduate works.Also see Find Dissertations and Theses for other specialized sources.
Dissertations completed at UC Berkeley can be found in OskiCat, using the feature allowing you to limit to dissertations/theses.Older dissertations not available full text may be obtained through Interlibrary Loan or using the "Request" option in Melvyl.
Finding Tests
Online indexes to find tests and measures in print:
Search Tips
- Use synonyms -- there are many ways to express a concept (teenager or teenagers or adolescent)
- Use truncation to get different forms of the word, for example teenage* will retrieve teenagers, teenager, teenaged, etc.
- Use quotation marks when you want an "exact phrase"
- Restrict by date -- most will let you find only the most current five years if you chose that limit.
- Use "controlled vocabulary" (also called descriptors or subject headings) if the database has them. The PsycInfo Thesaurus is a very powerful tool. It helps you identify articles that are about a topic, not just that have the word in the abstract. For example, if you are looking for the cause of a certain psychological problem, the descriptor "etiology" finds material that looks at causality.
- Use the special "limits" or "fields" that the database offers. They really do help you make a more focused and powerful search. PsycInfo lets you use many helpful limits including:
- Methodology-- are you interested in literature reviews? Empirical studies? Clinical trials? Quantitative or qualitative studies?
- Population -- do you want research based on humans? Males vs. females?
- Age of subjects -- adolescents? children? old people?
- Publication type -- do you want articles? dissertations? books?
Finding Tests in PubMed
Combine your topic search with as many assessment keywords as possible to locate a test on a specific topic (be sure to truncate or use both singular and plural forms):
Example: diabetes AND (assessment OR interview OR inventory OR measur* OR questionnaire OR rating OR scale OR survey OR test OR tool)
Thanks to NCSU Library for this query suggestion!
Evidence Based Practice
Evidence Based Practice, to quote Professor Gambrill, is "a new educational and practice paradigm for closing the gaps between research and practice to maximize opportunities to help clients and avoid harm.”
- The Campbell Collaboration (Motto: What helps? What harms? On what evidence?) is an international research network that produces systematic reviews of the effects of social interventions.
- The California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare reports on programs being used or marketed in California.
- The Social Work Policy Institute on Evidence-Based Practice.
- The Cochrane Library indexes journal articles, reviews, and bibliographies which provide evidence-based effects of health services
- Evidence Database on Aging SWLI populates the evidence database with published studies and articles that inform and advance policy discussions regarding aging care and the role of social workers.
School of Social Welfare dissertations and theses: background
The Social Welfare Library has print copies of dissertations, theses, and group research projects produced in the School of Social Welfare since its establishment in 1944 through 2010. Theses were submitted for masters degrees beginning in 1946. From 1948 until the early 1970s, group research projects – by groups of students under the supervision of a faculty member – were an alternative to individual masters theses. Beginning in 1960, dissertations were submitted for the DSW in social welfare, and after 1988 for the PhD.
Beginning in 2010, all dissertations at UC Berkeley were produced in electronic format only and are available through the library's online databases.
If you want to include group research projects or masters' theses in your search, you must use OskiCat, Melvyl, or WorldCat Dissertations. Other dissertation databases index only dissertations in social work at Berkeley and do not include theses or group projects.
- Call numbers for dissertations begin with HV13.A14.
- Call numbers for masters' theses begin with HV13.A135.
- Call numbers for group research projects begin with HV13.A132.
Fulltext Tests & Measures
PsycTESTS from APA -- primarily unpublished tests, most (but not all) records include the actual test instrument. Also provides information about psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments including descriptive information about the test and its development and administration. This can be a bit tricky to use, here's a quick guide on how to use it with Screenshots on searching PsycTESTS via SlideShare.
eBooks and books with full-text scales:
Online searchable sites with full-text scales:
General Resources for Tests
Sites with test information:
Lexis Nexis Tips
- Use truncation (wildcard) to search different forms of the word (child* retrieves child, child's, children)
- Use 'proximity connectors' -- w/[number], for example (youth or adolescent or teen*) w/25 homeless*. (You can also use w/s for within sentence, or w/p for within paragraph but you can't also combine these with the number of words.)
- Change the display to Expanded List -- shows you your search terms, plus a few words on either side.
- Change display to Relevance if it is on Chronological (if date is really important to you, restrict to the date range you want in the search box).