Content last reviewed:
1. What went well? Or, what did you learn from this session?
2. What are you still unsure about? Or, what would you improve?
All feedback will be anonymous and will only be used for professional development.
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 terms and concepts.
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 1: Write your topic out in sentence or question form
- How do Canadian social workers treat teenage drug abuse?
Step 2: Break your topic sentence up into main ideas or keywords
- Canada, social work, teenage, drug abuse
Step 3: Think of synonyms or alternate words to describe each concept
- teenage - juvenile, youth
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.
- Canada AND social work AND teenage AND drug abuse
- (teenage OR youth OR juvenile) - 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.
- (teenage* OR youth OR juvenile*) AND Canad* AND drug abuse
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.
- "drug abuse"
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 using OMNI
When searching, consider the following:
Once you have your results:
- To see only BOOKS click on Book
- To see only JOURNAL ARTICLES click on Articles and click on Peer-Reviewed Journals.
Because there will be many results, it is important to narrow your search.
Narrow by:
- Resource Type
- Publication Date
- Subject
- Language
- Location
More information available here.
More information regarding finding journal articles here.
Academic journals (also known as periodicals or serials) publish the world's most recent research in all disciplines. Popular magazines are primarily designed to entertain as well as inform. See Academic Journals vs. Popular Magazines and Newspapers to learn the differences between these.
Many of our databases allow you to limit your searches to "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed" journals. These are other words for academic.
To search for Academic Journal Articles use the following:
OMNI
When searching OMNI, consider the following:
Once you have your results:
- To see only BOOKS click on Book/eBook.
- To see only JOURNAL ARTICLES click on Journal Article and click on Scholarly & Peer-Review.
Because there will be many results, it is important to narrow your search.
Narrow by:
- Content Type
- Discipline
- Publication Date
- Subject Terms
- Language
- Library Location
Also try: Advanced Search
Specialized Databases:
- Social Work Abstracts
- Social Services Abstracts
- Canadian Business and Current Affairs Database (especially good for Canadian material)
- CINAHL
- JSTOR
- PsycINFO
Do NOT limit yourself to these databases alone. See Databases by SUBJECT Page
You can order journal articles and print material directly from OMNI now. This service is free and has a very quick turnaround.
If you need assistance with this, contact the Library Services Desk:
- LibraryServices@cunet.carleton.ca
- 613-520-2600 ext. 2734
Go to these pages to get help using APA style:
- Owl Purdue APA
- APA Style (American Psychological Association)
- APA Citation Style (Concordia University)
