SOWK 2100 - The Political Economy of the Social Welfare

Getting Started

Pick a research topic:

Read your syllabus (assignment instructions).
Pick a topic that interests you and meets the assignment instructions.
Narrow or broaden the scope of your topic so that it is "doable."
- What's scope? Scope refers to the "people, places and things" or "who, what, when and where" that you are studying. For example, Canada or another country? Children or adults? Education or child protection services?

Identify key concepts:

Use an online thesaurus.
Use a dictionary or encyclopedia to find definitions and explanations of social work and political economy terms and concepts.

Online resources like Google and Wikipedia, while not always accurate, are a great way to orient yourself in a topic, since they usually give a basic overview with a brief history and any key points. Reminder: you cannot use Wikipedia as a source in your bibliography!

Do an initial search for academic sources:

Here is a Subject Guide to help you pick the right databases, search-engines and sources for your assignment.

Step-by-Step Guide to Building your Search

STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO BREAKING YOUR SEARCH QUESTION INTO A SEARCH PHRASE

Step 1: Write your topic out in sentence or question form

How does economic inequality affect women in Canada?

Step 2: Break your topic sentence up into main ideas or keywords

economic, inequality, women, Canada

Step 3: Think of synonyms or alternate words to describe each concept

inequality - disparity, imbalance
women - gender, female

Tip: Use dictionaries, encyclopedias, or a thesaurus to find alternate words.

Step 4: Add "Boolean operators" (AND, OR) to make a complete search statement

Use AND to limit or narrow your search to results that mention all of your keywords.
Use OR to broaden your search to include synonyms.
Economic AND inequality AND women AND Canada
(inequality OR disparity OR imbalance) - Note: OR terms must be bracketed.

Step 5: Add wildcards to search for all possible word endings

A wildcard is usually represented by a *. This is also called truncation.

economic AND (inequality OR disparity OR imbalance) AND (wom*n OR female* OR gender) AND Canad*

Step 6: Consider Key Phrase searching

Some databases search each word separately. To ensure that your words are evaluated as a key phrase, enclose them in double quotation marks.

"human rights"

Step 7: Evaluate your results

If you are finding too many or too few results, try these tricks:

To broaden your search (find more):

Find synonym for each keyword.
Search for a broader concept ('dog' instead of 'poodle').
Use wildcards/truncation.

To narrow your search (find fewer):

Add another concept or idea to your search with AND
Use more specific words ('poodle' instead of 'dog')

Find Books and Journal Articles in OMNI

The library's search tool Omni is on the library homepage and lets you do just one search to find books, newspaper articles, journal articles, and other types of resources.

Search Strategies and OMNI video

Search tips:

Use keywords only, do not search using a full sentence. OMNI is not like Google. You cannot type in a question or sentence and get results.
Use an online thesaurus to help find synonyms for your keywords.
Use the Step-by-Step Guide to Building your Search above to create your search string.

Narrow by:

Resource Type
Publication Date
Subject
Language
Location

More information available here.

Identifying Relevant Articles

Read the Abstract & Conclusion FIRST - this will give you a good idea if the article is relevant to your topic.

How to do I get material that is not available in the library?

You can order journal articles and print material directly from OMNI now. This service is free and has a very quick turnaround.

Journal articles will be emailed to you and can be available within a few hours.

Print material will be available at the Library Services Desk and you will be notified by email. You can even have your material sent to another university for pick up. For example, if you live downtown, you may want to have your material sent to the University of Ottawa Library.

Watch this video to see how it is done!

If you need assistance with this, contact the Library Services Desk:

LibraryServices@cunet.carleton.ca
613-520-2600 ext. 2734

Finding Journal Articles in Library Databases

Use the same Search Tips as found above in the Step-by-Step Guide to Building your Search. The databases are not like Google. You cannot search an entire question or sentence.

Tip: Most databases provide a way to restrict the results of a search to peer-reviewed or academic articles. This may be done differently from database to database.

Specialized databases you should use:

Social Work Abstracts
Social Services Abstracts
Both CPI-Q and Canadian Business and Current Affairs Database have Canadian content.
JSTOR and Google Scholar are both excellent multidisciplinary databases.

Special topics

Business: Business Source Complete
Children: Child Development & Adolescent Studies and Child Welfare Information Gateway
Criminal Justice: Criminal Justice Abstracts
Economics: EconLit
Education: ERIC
Gender and women's studies: Gender Studies database and Studies on Women and Gender Abstracts
Health (including women's health): Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL)
History: America History and Life (Canada and US)
Human rights: HuriSearch
Indigenous peoples: Bibliography of Native North Americans and America History and Life and Native Health Database
Mental Health: PsycINFO
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): PTSDpubs and PsycINFO
Public Policy: PAIS Index
Political Economy: EconLit
Poverty: Sociological Abstracts and World Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts
Social change, social welfare, social care and social services: Sociological Abstracts and Sociology Database

TIP: Click on "Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals" box if the option appears. This way you will only see those articles are that appropriate for your research.

Do not limit yourself to these databases alone. Check Databases by Subject page to see where there may be more databases that suit your research.

Grey Literature and Internet Searching

Yes, you can use Google or any other Internet search engine to locate resources... but how do you know when what you have found is authoritative and trustworthy?

You are responsible for ensuring the academic content of the documents that you use. Consider carefully how you will assess the information that you find. You may wish to find answers for these questions:

is the author affiliated with an academic institution?
is a biography available for the author from a trusted (reference) source?
what is the reputation of the author?
is the article peer-reviewed?
who has cited (used) this article in other research?
is the web site associated with an educational institution?
is there a physical address associated with the web site / author?

Evaluating Online Information: use the CRAAP test

Grey Literature

Grey Literature is another good source of information.

Grey literature is defined as "information produced on all levels of government, academics, business and industry in electronic and print formats not controlled by commercial publishing" ie. where publishing is not the primary activity of the producing body." —ICGL Luxembourg definition, 1997. Expanded in New York, 2004.

This is the best place to start for information on Grey Literature.

Go to the Think Tanks Page to find more Grey Literature

Google Advanced Searching

Restricting content to file type

to do this type in your topic and then "filetype:pdf" or "filetype:doc"

Restricting content to site .org or .gov sites

to do this type in your topic and then either "site:.org" OR "site:.gov" OR "site:.edu"

Restricting content to searching titles only

to do this type search "intitle: "human rights""

To exclude words from your search

to do this search use operator "-" (minus) eg. jaguar speed -car

Research, Comprehension, Writing and Citing

Research Skills Tips:

Start broad, then dive into the specifics. Get a good overview of your topic (see information above in Getting Started...). Then start narrowing down to more specific ideas.
Learn how to recognize a quality source. Not every source is reliable, so it’s crucial that you recognize good sources. To determine a reliable source, use your analytical skills and critical thinking. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does this source agree with other sources I have found?
- Is the author an expert in the field?
- Does the author’s point of view have a conflict of interest regarding this topic?
Verify information from several sources. The internet is a big place, and, for the most part, anyone can say whatever they want online—many websites don’t evaluate their content for factual accuracy. Use the CRAAP test to help determine the accuracy of online information.
Stay organized
Start early
Use the Library!

Understanding the Academic Articles you read

Reading and comprehending academic articles is not easy. Use the information here to help with this process.

Writing Tips:

Search OMNI on the library homepage for Academic Writing.

Help is available on campus at the Writing Services.

You may find the following writing resources helpful as well:

Citation ~ Avoid Plagiarism

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to plagiarize is "to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own [or] use (another's production) without crediting the source".

Tips to avoid plagiarism

LEARN about:

Quoting, Paraphrasing and Summarizing.
This is an excellent video on paraphrasing which can be a little tricky.

TAKE NOTES: writing down page numbers and references throughout your research is a good way to save time when you need to quote and cite sources
NEVER copy and paste material unless you cite it properly.
At the end of each paper/report you must CITE ALL SOURCES you have used, whether you quote them directly or paraphrase the ideas.
When in doubt, ask for help!

The School of Social Work uses APA Style as their default style.

Paraphrasing (Purdue Online Writing Lab)
OWL (Purdue Online Writing Lab) APA

You can also just Google: "how do I cite xxxx in apa", which often turns up the official apa.org answer and other reputable (look for .edu or other university web sites). Example: "how do I cite a video in APA"

Academic Integrity @ Carleton University

Get Help!

Please contact me for individualized assistance. I am more than happy to help!

A - Z listing of numerous library topics such as Off-Campus Login Help and Choosing an Essay Topic.
Visit the Research Help Page.
Ask a librarian online or by text

If you are interested in figuring out library research on you own, try the Choose your Own Research Adventure pages.