Social Work Resources

Please refer to Dr. Trotter's document about the 12 Grand Challenges for Social Work when selecting your needs/issues for your Needs Assessment Proposal and your program Evaluation Proposal.

• Look at the agency's or program's website
• Contact the agency or program and ask them questions
• Search in library databases for articles

This ebook may be helpful for conducting a literature review:

Galvan's Writing Literature Reviews is available as an ebook.
Click on the “Access Online” button on the right side.

These books are available at Reserves on the 1st floor of the library (books are shelved by title) and are first come first served. You cannot place a hold on them. May be in-library use only.

• Measures for Clinical Practices, vol. 1-2 (Fisher & Corcoran) 

• The Handbook of Psychiatric Measures (Rush, et al) 

• Outcomes Assessment in Clinical Practice (Sederer & Dickey)  

• USA.gov (for state and federal government sites)
  Example searches:
  homelessness AND statistics
  OR
  [type in the name of a government department] such as Health & Human Services, U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Child Welfare Information Gateway, Department of Education, and so on.
• Contact a State of Idaho government agency directly to ask about statistics
• Google Search:
  for national associations or organizations
  Examples: endhomelessness.org--> Resources --> Data & Graphics

Go to the "Start Here!" tab on this guide to find recommended databases in which to search.

Boolean Connectors:  Use AND, OR, NOT to connect your keywords.
Example: homelessness AND children

Use an Asterisk at the end of part of a word to find multiple endings of the word or the plural of the word.
Example:  behavior* will find behavior, behaviors, behavioral

Use Quotes around two or more words that you want to search together.
Example:  “sexual abuse”

Sample Searches combining  the asterisk and quotes: 
teen*  AND “homelessness”
(youth OR teen* OR “young adult*”) AND “homelessness”

You can limit to peer reviewed articles, or scholarly articles, in the Ebsco and ProQuest databases after you search in the left menu. Alternatively, you can sometimes limit to peer reviewed articles on the initial search screen.

If you don't see a link to the full text article in a library database, you can select the blue and white FIND IT button to possibly link to the full text article in another database or on a publisher's website. If the article is not available online, you will have the option to do an interlibrary loan (ILL) request for the article which takes 1-3 weekdays.

If you need  research assistance, please contact the Social Work librarian Elaine Watson via email at ewatson@boisestate.edu. She is happy to schedule a time to meet with you in person on campus at a scheduled time via Zoom.