Pick a research topic

• Read your assignment instructions carefully
• Pick a topic that interests you and meets the criteria of the assignment
• Identify key concepts of your research topic
  • Need extra help? Try Choosing an essay topic
• Do some background reading on your topic using Wikipedia
  • Using Wikipedia wisely (video)

Identify key concepts

Subject specific dictionaries and encyclopedias are useful for helping you figure out the jargon of a discipline and can give quick overviews of a topic to get you started. You can often pick up keywords to use in your search strategies from these sources:

• Oxford research encyclopedias. Social work
• Canadian encyclopedia of social work
• A dictionary of social work and social care

Use this worksheet to write out your research topic and identify key ideas.

Developing a good search strategy is important

• what is your assignment?
• what is the main topic?
• what aspect of the topic is of interest to you?
• who has an interest in that topic?
• what other language might they be using to talk about that topic? do they spell it differently?
• when was it relevant? is it a new idea, or a long standing issue?
• what other factors play into your issue? climate, population, government, geography, etc.

Once you've decided which terms are the most useful for your search, combine them in a boolean search. 

For example: "social work" AND (child* OR youth OR teenage*)

• the brackets keep synonyms together
• the * will look for alternate endings
• AND/OR will modify a component to narrow or expand your results (the capitalization of AND/OR varies from database to database, it is better to get in the habit of capitalizing them)
• if you had a multi-word phrase, putting quotes around it will search specifically for those words, in that sequence, side by side such as "Human Rights"

Controlled vocabulary

Some databases have a list of terms used to index articles in a consistent manner.  These terms can be used to search for relevant material.

This list may be referred to as:

• Thesaurus
• Subject Headings
• Taxonomy
• Synonyms

Filters

Use database filters to narrow down and focus the results you find. For example:

• Category or Topic
• Document Type
• Date
• Search within
• Discover new search terms

As you read through a list of search results, take note of any new terms that are relevant to your topic.  Search using these new terms.

Writing for Social Work

• The Columbia Guide to Social Work Writing

Grey literature

Grey literature is an important source of information in social work. 

• It adds a valuable global perspective
• It provides detailed overviews on specific populations
• It may be the only source of local 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

Types of grey literature

• Government Information
• Dissertations and Theses
• Conference Proceedings (select Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science, you may also want to select the Social Science and Humanities option)
• Newspapers and Magazines
• Think Tank publications

Library resources

• OMNI (change Content Type to types of grey literature such as government documents, conference proceedings etc.)
• Google Scholar (change country, for example, to find international material)
• Databases such as Social Work Abstracts or the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL Database) (check document types; may include theses, conference proceedings, etc.)
• Business Source Complete (select publication type "Grey literature")
• Dissertations and Theses Global

Other Resources

• Grey Matters (a checklist for health technology assessment from the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH))
• Grey Net (an international directory of organizations in Grey Literature and a respository) 

Web sources of grey literature

Academic research centres and educational websites

• Academic Room
• Centre for Studies on Poverty and Social Citizenship (Carleton University, School of Social Work)

Social work organizations

• Canadian Association of Social Workers
• Canadian Association for Social Work Education (CASWE-ACFTS)
• Council on Social Work Education (United States)
• International Federation of Social Workers
• National Association of Social Workers (NASW) (United States)
• National Institute for Social Work (United Kingdom)
• Social Work Policy Institute (United States)

Social research groups 

• Ontario Public Interest Group (OPIRG) Toronto
• Caledon Institute of Social Policy A private, non-profit social policy think tank that conducts social policy research and analysis.
• The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
• Canadian Council on Social Development
• Canadian Index of Wellbeing Provides analyses of changes in Canadians' lives in areas such as health, standard of living, quality of the environment, time use, education and skills, community vitality, and civic engagement.
• The Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS) (Canada)
• The Council of Canadians
• National Council of Welfare 
• Social Research and Demonstration Corporation Canada (a non-profit research organization, that develops, does field tests and evaluates social programs)
• Think Tanks (University of Alberta Library)
• Vanier Institute of the Family

Social Work Gateways

• Charity Village Canada's supersite for the nonprofit sector
• PRAXIS (Resources for Social and Economic Development)
• Social Work Access Network (SWAN) (University of South Carolina)
• Social Work Internet Guide (University of Sydney Library)

More social work grey literature can be found under Special Topics