Tutorial for CPSP118C, the College Park Scholars' "Advocates for Children" Program
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Last revised: September 15, 2009


CPSP 118C

Scope: This tutorial is intended to support the assignments in CPSP118C, “College Park Scholars Colloquium I: Advocates for Children.”

When using this tutorial, if you have questions or need additional information, please contact Glenn Moreton, the Family Science Librarian.

Table of Contents


How to Conduct Scholarly Research

To conduct scholarly research, students must pick the best sources of information. In most cases these are scholarly books and journals. In some cases, popular materials such as magazines and newspapers may be used, especially for research that focuses current events. Also Internet Websites sometimes may be used, provided that the information is up-to-date and reliable (note: see Using Web Sources in the latter part of this document).

The University of Maryland Libraries Home Page has two tools that provide entryways to scholarly research: the Catalog and Research Port. The Catalog is where one looks to locate books (and also other materials, such as government documents, theses, films, etc. ) that the Libraries own. If you need to locate journal articles then click on the Research Port link and use databases. (Note: Be sure to click the "Databases" link rather than the "Journals" link. The reason is that "Databases" allow you to search thousands of journals at once, whereas the "Journals" link limits your search to one journal title at a time.) Most--but not all--of the databases primarily search scholarly (also called "peer-reviewed") journals. If you are not sure whether or not a journal is "scholarly," the following guide may help you decide: Identifying Periodical Types.

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How to Search the Catalog & the Databases

The Catalog lists books and other materials that are actually owned by the University of Maryland Libraries. Search here to find books, videos, journals (the titles, not the actual articles), and other material that are part of the Libraries' collection.

Research Port is a gateway to databases and electronic journals to which the Libraries subscribe. Use these databases to search for journal articles (and often to other materials). This is explained in more detail below under "How to Use Research Port."

When searching the Catalog or Databases, you will have most success if you use Boolean logic:

  • Boolean uses the words AND, OR, and sometimes NOT, to connect key terms. One should use Boolean rather than randomly searching individual terms, or rather than searching a complete prose phrase or question (e.g. "Is there a correlation between poverty and child abuse). Instead, you should identify key terms, the most important words in the search phrase (e.g. "poverty"; “child abuse”), and use these terms with the Boolean connectors (e.g. "poverty” AND “child abuse") when conducting the search.

  • AND narrows a search, and OR expands it. So, if the search yields too many results, you can reduce the number of "hits" by adding an additional required term and connecting it to the other terms with the word AND. On the other hand, if a search yields too few results, you can enlarge the number of search results by adding an additional term and connecting it to the other terms with the word OR.

Other ways to expand or narrow searches:

  • If you have few hits, or if you want to conduct a thorough search, search keywords and also words that are related to those keywords (including synonyms and other forms of the word). For example in addition to searching on the word, “poverty” you can also search on the words and phrases: “poor,” “low income,” and "welfare" in order to get more hits. As explained previously, be sure to put the word OR in between each of these terms.
  • If you have too many hits after your search, another way to narrow searches is by searching for a given term only if it is used in the title or is used as a subject. The catalog and most databases automatically search for the desired term in all or most of the data in a citation (i.e. the database will search for the word in the title, the author, the subject, the abstract or summary of the article, etc.). In most cases one will see the term “Default Fields” or “All Fields” to indicate that all or most of the fields are being searched. If your search produces too many citations, and many of them appear irrelevant to your topic, you may search for the term only if it is listed in the title or as a subject. To do this, change the search menu item from “Default Fields” or “All Fields” to “Title” or “Subject” options (Note: Some databases use the term “Descriptors” instead of “Subject”).

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Catalog
  • Searching for Books:

    Search the Libraries' Catalog for books and documents on your topic. Start with a "word/s anywhere" search.

    Example: poverty and “child abuse”

    Please note that the Catalog does not recognize phrases unless you put the phrase in quotation marks. So, be sure to enclose phases such as “child abuse,” “foster homes," “low income,” etc. in quotation marks. If you do not, the search engine will search for each word separately rather than side by side. Also note that the Catalog will only search for two word phrases—nothing longer. (Note: most Research Port databases do not have these limitations.)

    • Some articles may not actually use the phrase "child abuse," but instead may use a phrase such as "abuse of children." Our previous search terms may skip over these books. So how can we modify our search so that we can get these items? Here's a possible solution:

    Example: poverty and child* and abuse

    Also note the use of the asterisk expanded the search (*) after the word “child.” This is an example of what is called a "truncation symbol." This device merely offers a shortcut that enables you to search any word that has “child” as a stem. Thus in this instance it simultaneously searches for the words “child" OR "children" OR "child's" OR "children's." I could have written all of these words--including the "OR" in between each of them--but this is an easier, quicker way to do it. (Note: This feature also is available in most Research Port databases.)

  • Searching for Journals:

    You can also use the Catalog to find out whether the Libraries subscribe to print copies of a particular journal. Click on the "Journals" button. Then conduct a "title beginning with" search on the JOURNAL TITLE (not on the ARTICLE TITLE).

    Example: Journal of Family Issues

    You cannot use the Catalog to search the contents of journals for actual articles. To search for journal articles, you need to use Research Port Databases such as those that are listed in the next section of this guide/tutorial.

Further information about how to use the Catalog is available in an online Catalog Guide.

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How to Use Research Port

  • By going to the Libraries' Research Port page, you can get access to the more than 300 bibliographic databases. These databases are indexes that allow users to perform comprehensive searches for journal articles. Such searches will yield either article citations or full-text articles, depending on the respective indexes and articles. In addition to searching journals, most of these indexes also search other types of documents such as conference proceedings, research reports, book and book chapters, and government documents.

  • You can reach the databases by going to Research Port. If you are off campus, and select “Research Port” from the Libraries’ homepage, you will be asked to input your id number and last name (if you are using an on-campus computer you will not be asked to do this).

  • When you are on the Research Port page, click on the “Databases” link. You may then look at individual databases (by selecting the “by database name” link and clicking either the desired title or the respective magnifying glass icon.). Or you may look at lists of all of the databases assigned to a given topic (by selecting the “by subject category” link).

  • If you find a citation for an article that you need, but the full-text does not appear to be available on-line, the next step is for you to hit the “Find It” button. By doing this you will learn if there are possibly full-text source links that did not appear on the previous screen. If there are no full-text links, the “Find It” screen will tell you if the journal that contains the desired article is listed in the Libraries Catalog. If it is, you may click on the Catalog link that appears on the screen to get the call number of the journal. With this call number you can determine library location where you can physically retrieve the journal (and the desired article).

  • If the Libraries do not own a journal or book that you need, Interlibrary Loan can possibly get it for you. This is a free service offered to all patrons who have a current UM ID. The ILL office will search libraries throughout the nation to get books, periodical articles, dissertations, microforms, government documents, and technical reports that you may need. All you need to do is to submit an Interlibrary Loan Online Request Form. ILL usually receives the requested items in about two weeks. A link to this form is also available on the “Find It” screen.

  • For the purposes of this course, you will not need to use the “Quick Search,” the “E-Journals,” the “Cross Search,” or the “My Research Port” options.

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Research Port Databases

Two particularly useful databases that deal with child welfare issues are:

  • Family & Society Studies Worldwide. A primary family science resource, Family & Society Studies Worldwide provides more than 700,000 citations and abstracts to professional journals, books, book chapters, conference papers, theses & dissertations, websites & internet documents, selected popular literature, government reports, statistical documents, working papers, and unpublished material.

  • SocIndex . This EBSCO-based index features more than 1,300,000 records with subject headings from a 15,600 term sociology-specific thesaurus designed by expert lexicographers.

You should also look at general, multidisciplinary databases, for they will have numerous articles that deal with child welfare. The Web of Scienc is a comprehensive database that will yield many scholarly articles. Academic Search Premier and Masterfile Premier provide access to articles in both popular magazines and scholarly journals. When using these two database, if you want only scholarly journals, you can limit your search by clicking "peer reviewed" box.

  • Academic Search Premier
    Information about articles from 3000 general, humanities, social science, and science periodicals from over 1700 peer-reviewed journals. Many of the articles are available full-text.

  • MasterFile Premier
    Multidisciplinary database that provides abstracts and indexing for more than 2500 general periodicals, with full-text articles for most of them.

  • Web of Science
    Comprised of the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Humanities Citation Index databases, this is a mutltidisciplinary resource. In the social sciences alone it indexes more than 17,000 holdings journals in sociology, anthropology, public health, social work, political science, law, economics, and geography. Serves as a unique tool because it provides cited reference searching, allowing the user to identify researchers who have referenced a given article since its publication.

You may find many articles that deal with child welfare by going to databases that specialize in given academic subjects. For example, you can find other helpful child welfare articles respectively in these education and psychology databases:

  • Education Research Complete.
    This is the "world's largest and most complete collection of full text education journals."

  • ERIC. 1966-
    This database provides access to articles in more than 1000 journals and to an extensive file of non-journal documents in the field of education.

  • PsycInfo
    PsycInfo is the primary database for psychology and related desciplines (including family therapy). This very comprehensive database indexes and abstracts more than one million articles in 1,300 journals from nearly 50 countries. PsycInfo provides citations and abstracts to journal articles, book chapters and books, technical reports, and dissertations.

Here are health/medical databases of articles that deal with health issues that pertain to child welfare:

  • CINAHL
    CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature) covers over 1600 professional journals in nursing and allied health.

  • Medline
    Medline provides abstracts for about 5,000 biomedical journals published in the U.S. and 70 foreign countries.

Sources of newspaper articles:

  • Ethnic Newswatch
    An index to full-text articles in newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. If you wish to examine child welfare within specific minority populations, this database will be quite helpful:

  • Lexis-Nexis Academic (previously called Academic Universe)
    This database offers a wide range of news, political, legal, business, and reference information in full-text format. Primary source of newspaper articles, including those from the Washington Post and the New York Times. Also used for legal research.

  • Proquest Newspapers

Government, public policy, and law resources include:

  • CQ Public Affairs Collection
    A full-text database which features in-depth reporting on vital issues, statistical and historical analyses, historic documents and primary source materials, as well as a directory of key government, nonprofit, and private organizations in each of the major policy areas.

  • CQ Researcher
    Covers news topics in a wide range of subject fields, from social issues to environment, health, education and science and technology. This full-text database is unique in that each issue of this publication selects a specific timely topic (e.g. foster care reform, child poverty, children and divorce, fatherhood movement, parental rights, caring for the elderly, etc.) and presents comprehensive information on all aspects of this topic. This information includes history and background information, a detailed report of the current situation, relevant pro & con arguments, bibliographies, and contact information.

  • Lexis Nexis Congressional (previously called Congressional Universe.)
    Comprehensive access to US legislative information. Useful tool for tracking histories of legislation which pertains to families.

  • PAIS International
    Index to articles, books, conference proceedings, government documents, book chapters, and statistical directories about public affairs from 1972 to the present.

  • Westlaw Campus Research
    Full-text access to cases from the courts of all 50 states and federal courts, statutes from all 50 states and federal statutes.

If you are conducting extensive in-depth research, most likely no one database will meet all of your research needs. It is always a good idea to consult a number of databases.

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Using Web Sources

Often students think they can get all of the information they need merely by using a search engine such as Google to browse the Internet. Although some useful information may be found this way, this is not the primary route for scholarly research:

  • General Internet searches will yield only a very small percentage of the "scholarly" information that is available on a given topic. Scholarly information is controlled by copyright and thus is available primarily through scholarly journals or through databases, such as the Libraries' Research Port databases, that index these journals. So rather than making data available free on the Internet, scholarly information is controlled by publishers and researchers who want to get paid for their efforts. The Libraries pay for costly subscriptions to scholarly journals and to the Research Port database so that UMCP students and faculty can have free access to this scholarly information.

  • Another reason that one should not rely solely on browsing the Net to get scholarly data is that there is no control over the validity of the information. Anyone can create a Web page; consequently, much data in many Web sites contains errors or may be intentionally distorted (e.g. due to a particular political bias).

  • Despite these constraints, researchers ofteny still can get good information by browsing the Internet, but only after carefully evaluating that Web Site and its data. The Libraries have created a guide to Evaluating Web Sites to help students do just that.


Useful Websites

Even though scholarly journals and databases are the best sources for scholarly information, one can still gain useful data from websites. Many reliable and useful websites are created by nationally known, reputable organizations or government agencies. Here is a random sampling of some of these Internet sites that deal with child advocacy and/or children's rights:

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Other Tools

  • Family Science Resources

    This guide cites numerous print reference tools (encyclopedias, handbooks, etc.) available at McKeldin Library, sources of statistical information, and other resources that assist one in researching families. Many of these items also will provide information about children and children's issues.

  • The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

    This is a style manual for manuscript preparation that is used by scholars both in and outside of the field of psychology. At McKeldin Library, this APA manual is available in the stacks call number: BF76.7.P83 1994) and on the Quick Reference shelves, located across from the service desk in the Service Plus Information and Reference Center.

    Many of the Research Port databases offer a new feature: They will create a bibliographic citation in APA format (and other formats) for the individual article that you select. Here is an example of the EBSCO site that has an icon marked by an arrow in the following example)…


    …that will take you to a page that lists citations for your selected article, e.g.:

    Though the manuals are not directly available electronically, one can get much helpful information about them from the following links:

    • "Citing Sources Using the APA Style" page. The Libraries have created this page that explains more about this style manual.

    • Another useful site is "Assembling a List of Works Cited in Your Paper". Created by Duke University, this site provides quick and easy directions for creating citations for articles and books. This tool shows each citation using each of the popular style guides, including the APA Publication Manual.. Also it gives advice about how to avoid plagiarism.

    • Another site that may be helpful is the "APA Style Resources" page on Psych Web; it provides links to a number of guides and Web pages that provide writing tips and suggestions for its application.

    • "Organizing/Citing Tools" page (accessible from the "Reference Shelf" option on the Libraries' home page.

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Last modified: September 15, 2009

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