Social Welfare 282Conducting a Literature Review

Susan Edwards seedwards@berkeley.eduHead, Social Sciences Division

10/03/2016

Why Do A Literature Review?

Explore the research that has come before you, and identify:

• core research in the field• experts in the subject area• methodology you may want to use (or avoid)• gaps in the literature -- or where your research

would fit in

Required for:

• Research papers• Publication• Grants• Identifying best practices in field

Why Can’t We Just Use Google?(Or Search JSTOR?)

Only Librarians Like to Search –Everyone Else Just Likes to Find!

-- Roy Tennant

Research Literature Is Vast

28,100 peer-reviewed journals in English (6450 non-English-language journals)*

Publishing about 2.5 million articles a year.

Precision vs. Recall

Databases help increase precision – relevance of results

Often include:• Abstracts• Citations, and cited by• Link to fulltext or request via ILL.• Advanced Search Techniques

Database Searching

Boolean SearchingOR, AND, NOT

More

Phrases In “Quotation Marks”Limit by DateTruncation (truncat*) – i.e., homeless*, teen*Common fields: Author, title of journal, etc.Special fields– research method, age of subjectControlled Vocabulary – Thesaurus

Challenges in SocW Research

• Multidisciplinary• Policy informed• Uses statistics• Evidence-based

(What has been tried? Does it work?)

Multidisciplinary

1,213 Databases

– WHICH to Use? (Pilots, HAPI, etc.)

– HOW to Use?

• GreenBook

• Census

• Statistical Abstract of the United States

• Many More…

Statistical Sources

Policy Research

Congressional (NOT free – surprise!)

Legal (Ditto)

NGO/Think Tanks/Policy Institutes

Online Guide

Evidence Based Research

Guide for Finding Evidence Based Research

Thanks to http://www.slideshare.net/ileggat/vu-library-evidencebased-practice-workshop

Citations

• Why cite?• How to cite using APA 6th?• Software to make it easier: Zotero, RefWorks,

EndNote, etc.

Social Welfare Research