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Open Access Social Work Resources: Open Access Resources

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What is Open Access (OA)?

Open access finding tools.

• UnPaywall A browser extension that connects you to open access versions of articles when they're available.
• Open Access Button A browser extension to help find open access articles and open data. If an item is paywalled, the project will start a request for you to access the research.
• 12ft.io This tool can remove the paywall from any news site by using cached versions of article webpages. Add the prepend (12ft.io/) to the beginning of the URL of a paywalled page to get access to the full news article.

Searching for OA Articles

There are a few primary resources to search for open access articles relevant to social work:

• Google Scholar  primarily searches the following: academic publisher websites, Google books, institutional repositories and .edu sites, .gov site
• oaDOI  searches by the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for an open access version of the article. You need the DOI number to search; this is usually available from the article citation. 
• OAIster is a union catalog of millions of records that represent open access resources worldwide.
• OAJSE  is an e-journal search portal to find articles in open access journals. 

Open Textbooks

More Social Work Open Education Resources...

Open Access Social Work & Related Databases

• BioMed Central is an open access publisher of over 200 free online academic journals specializing in subjects related to science, technology and medicine. Areas of interest to social workers include public health, substance abuse, Alzheimer's research and health care policy.
• ERIC is a federally supported database of education-related articles
• From the website: "DOAJ is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals."
• All books published by the National Academies Press can be downloaded as PDFs for free by registering for a free account. Browse topics like aging, children, youth & families, policy, reviews and evaluations, population and fertility studies, women and minorities.   
• Follow the latest bills in Congress. Find information on Congressional votes. Learn who sits on which senate or house committees and how they voted. "OpenCongress helps you track all the actions by your elected officials and what people are saying about them."
• Reports written by the Congressional Research Service in order to keep members of Congress and their staff up to date on a number of important policy and government issues.
• OpenDOAR is a directory which links to open access repositories from around the world. These repositories contain a wealth of freely available scholarly articles, data and dissertations from leading universities. Browse individual repositories or search across all repositories to find articles written by faculty and scholars from these universities.
• PsycArXiv is also a disciplinary repository. PsycArXiv includes clinical psychology, developmental psychology and other related areas. 
• "The Public Library of Science (PLoS) is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource." PLoS journals are concentrated in the areas of biology, medicine and genetics but health policy, mental health, public health and other health areas may be of importance to some social work researchers.
• Search open access journals, conference proceedings, academic repositories and recent (since 2014) monograph series. 
• Open archive of the social sciences, provides a free, non-profit, open access platform for social scientists to upload working papers, preprints, and published papers, with the option to link data and code.
• This site acts as a repository for scholars in social sciences fields to share their research. Authors may upload and share their papers for no charge and papers are free or very low cost to download. 
• ​ Search  within over 160 peer-reviewed open access journals and some open access books. Most journals are in the medicine and science but there are some articles covering the social sciences. 
• Links to collections of freely available, open access research from Taylor & Francis journals by the following subject catagories: Health, HIV/AIDS, Sexuality & Sexual Health and Social Work.

Open Access Social Work Journals

• Advances in Social Work
• Behavior and Social Issues
• Columbia Social Work Review
• Critical Social Work
• Currents: Scholarship in the Human Services
• International Journal of Conflict and Violence
• Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Policy and Practice
• Journal of Comparative Social Work
• Journal of Family Strengths
• Journal of Social Inclusion
• Journal of the Social Sciences
• Journal of Social Work Values & Ethics ; not peer-reviewed
• Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research ; Open access 2010-2019 (V.1 - V.10)
• The Qualitative Report
• Social Work and Society
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• Last Updated: Feb 27, 2024 4:12 PM
• URL: https://simmons.libguides.com/OASW

Related Pages

Journal of the society for social work and research, about the journal.

Frequency: 4 issues/year ISSN: 2334-2315 E-ISSN: 1948-822X 2022 CiteScore*: 1.9 Ranked #500 out of 1,415 “Sociology and Political Science” journals

Founded in 2009, the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research ( JSSWR ) is the flagship publication of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), a freestanding organization founded in 1994 to advance social work research.

JSSWR is a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to timely dissemination of innovative interdisciplinary research on pressing and complex social problems, methodological advances, and programs, interventions, and policies that contribute to meaningful and actionable social change. Committed to publishing social work and social justice scholarship that aims to improve the lives of communities and individuals who have been historically marginalized, JSSWR prioritizes research grounded in anti-oppressive, antiracist, and intersectional frameworks that challenge existing paradigms and structures that produce and sustain social inequalities and inequities. JSSWR publishes a wide range of perspectives, research approaches, and types of analyses that advance knowledge useful for designing social programs and interventions, developing innovative public policies, and improving social work research and practice globally.

The audience of JSSWR extends beyond SSWR membership to the broader population of practitioners, administrators, and policymakers whose interests include social and health problems. JSSWR considers all forms of research, including qualitative, quantitative, comparative, mixed methods, and visual methods. Its focus encompasses research relevant to a wide array of substantive fields and disciplines. JSSWR publishes full-length articles, brief reports, systematic reviews with and without meta-analyses, and commentaries. The journal is committed to rapid peer review and publication, and the turnaround time from manuscript submission to first decision averages 25 days.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief Todd I. Herrenkohl, University of Michigan

Managing Editor Chelsey Baker-Hauck

Editorial Assistant Meggie Royer, University of Michigan

Associate Editors Inna Altschul, University of Denver David Ansong, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Anamika Barman Adhikari, University of Denver Jennifer L. Bellamy, University of Denver Julie Birkenmaier, Saint Louis University Qiana L. Brown, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey G. Lawrence Farmer, Fordham University Lisa Fedina, University of Michigan Aaron Gottlieb, University of Illinois Chicago Justin S. Harty, Arizona State University Charles Lea, Columbia University Jungeun Olivia Lee, University of Southern California Brandy Maynard, St. Louis University Boyoung Nam, Yonsei University Jennifer Dickman Portz, University of Colorado Anschutz Phyllis Solomon, University of Pennsylvania Susan Stone, University of California, Berkeley Anne Williford, Colorado State University Nikki R. Wooten, University of South Carolina Mansoo Yu, University of Missouri

CONTACT THE EDITORIAL OFFICE

Mailing Address: University of Michigan School of Social Work 1080 South University Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106

Principal Contact: Todd I. Herrenkohl, Editor-in-Chief Email: [email protected] Telephone: 734-763-9382

Support Contact: Chelsey Baker-Hauck, Managing Editor Email: [email protected] Telephone: 303-880-9711

Online Research Guide

students can use research techniques that increase the likelihood that they find material directly related to their ideas.

The internet revolutionized the way students conduct research. Most schools offer access to online databases that house primary sources and digital materials for research use. Additionally, many local public libraries offer similar access to digital information in addition to their physical texts. Using the internet makes research easier and faster, as it offers students new and effective methods to filter results and organize material.

However, with the abundance of new information available quickly and easily online, students should carefully consider the viability of each source. Plenty of unreliable and outright false information exists online, so students must use discretion when evaluating material. This guide walks students through social work online research and provides tips and tricks to ensure that they maximize their research efforts.

Using Google for Online Research

More than likely, you’ve used Google to search online. Type your query into the search bar, and you instantly receive millions of results. However, students can use research techniques that increase the likelihood that they find material directly related to their ideas. Altering search engine settings can help filter out unreliable sources and provide you with search results relevant to your topic. These examples specifically utilize Google, as it serves as the most commonly and widely used search engine.

Refining Your Search Results

Students can use things like symbols and search shortcuts to narrow down results. If you want to search within a specific website, you can use the site search feature on Google. Simply type “‘site:”‘ followed by the domain you want to search within — without any spaces between the colon and the domain. For example, if you want to search within the Council on Social Work Education website, you type “‘site:cswe.org.”‘ Those looking for something specific within a website can add a search keyword before this shortcut. For example, if you wanted to find more information on the accreditation of social work programs within the Council on Social Work Education website, you type “program accreditation site:cswe.org.”‘ You can also use this site function to filter a particular class of website, such as .edu, .gov, or .org.

You can refine your Google search results without any search shortcuts, as well. Google offers an advanced search option that allows you to input additional information to generate your preferred results. For example, in addition to a simple keyword or search phrase, you can also specify which languages you want and the timeframe of your results — say, 2010-2018.

Google Scholar

When looking up social work research topics, especially for academic purposes, students should choose peer-reviewed, scholarly sources.

Many post-secondary institutions offer students access to otherwise expensive academic databases. Thanks to Google Scholar, however, even students without access to these databases can still find quality sources. Google Scholar searches most of the popular academic databases and often allows you to access and read entire articles. Many list Google Scholar’s ease of use as its most attractive feature. On the main search page, simply type in your query and select whether you want to search articles or case law. Google then produces immediate results.

Additionally, using your Google Scholar Preferences dashboard, you can set up your account to automatically access any resources available through your college or university, save links and documents to a personal library, and link any public library access accounts you may hold. Google Scholar also offers a support page with search tips and details on getting the most out of the service.

Beyond Google

Now that you know more about the tools available through Google, you can also explore alternative search engines and databases. As previously mentioned, students can often access these databases free of charge. The list below contains some of the more commonly used resources for general academic research, as well as a few specific to students conducting social work online research.

For Social Work students

Evaluating Sources

When conducting any kind of research on the web, students need to ensure that they can trust their resources. While going through every resource to determine its legitimacy might seem daunting, source legitimacy should take priority in research-oriented writing. The list below reflects the tips gathered from Georgetown University and the University of Chicago Press .

Who is the author?

Make sure you can easily identify the author of the source. After identifying them, find out more about their background. They should hold a graduate degree or at least boast other publications dedicated to the field in question. The more qualitative credentials they possess the higher their authoritative voice.

What is its purpose?

Ask yourself about the article’s purpose and determine how it meets the concerns of the field as a whole. Does the author show bias or provide research, and to what audience does the author write?

Does it look professional?

Look over the article or website. Can you find several spelling and grammar errors? Does the content appear organized and formatted? The more professional the source appears, the higher the chance that a professional, in fact, created the source. A website littered with profanities, for example, probably does not count as a legitimate source.

Is it objective?

Look for any bias within the article. Students familiar with the given research can spot an article with clear bias through the content and purpose of the article — not to mention the organizational affiliations of the author. Consider whether the author interprets the given information in a fair and unbiased manner, or whether they betray a degree of bias.

Is it current?

Check for a date of publication. Work older than 10 years typically serves as poor research material — especially in the sciences and social science. When using search engines and databases, adjust your search to only show recent results.

What sites does it link to?

Sometimes evaluating a source means evaluating the sources within that source. Look at the external resources or links used by your author. If those sources seem reliable, students can probably expect the work in question to be reliable. This may take a little extra digging, but it adds an important layer of understanding concerning your source.

Organizing Your Research

Students should ensure that they remain organized throughout the research process. With so much information, organizing what you find decreases your level of stress. The tips below can help you establish an organization system.

Identify your keywords

Students should keep a list of useful keywords for their search. The more variety, the better overall results students will encounter. Typing the same keywords into different databases will probably not result in better material. Consider the use of synonyms to increase your odds of qualitative results.

Choose your databases

Decide which databases and search engines you want to use before you begin. Afterward, choose which one to start with and which one to end with. Not only does this set a unique timeline for your research, it helps you stay on track and remember the databases already searched.

Keep a list of researched places, keywords, and results. Any new research ideas should also get written down.

Keep a working bibliography

As you choose sources, cite them according to the appropriate style guidelines and place the citations in alphabetical order in a document. This will make creating your references page that much easier.

Use online tools

Students can use any number of digital tools and online resources to help them organize their research. The list below outlines a few of these and their unique interfaces and options.

Online Tools to Manage Your Research

• EasyBib This bibliography generator pulls citation information from your sources, generates citations, and creates a working bibliography.
• Endnote Endnote serves as a powerful organizing tool for students who want to keep digital copies of the sources alongside their citation information.
• Mendeley Mendeley offers both a unique method for organizing your sources and research and a social network for you and other researchers working in the same area.
• RefWorks This web-based tool allows you to generate citations, link to the source, and organize sources into folders and topics.
• Zotero With Zotero, you can organize your research and sources, as well as share work and information with others through forums.

Citing Online Resources for Social Work Students

Students will likely encounter several citation formats, including APA, MLA, and Chicago Style. Most programs require students engaged with social work research topics to adopt APA style to document and cite their work. Science and social science disciplines commonly use APA style. Students use APA to format their references, citations, research papers, and presentations.

Learners enjoy access to a an APA manual that they can purchase or rent from their school’s library. Alternatively, they can use the Purdue Online Writing Lab’s APA guide to help answer any style questions. The list below includes citation examples of common sources used in APA.

Articles From Online Periodicals

What is a doi.

Originally, when citing sources from online databases, you would use the URL of the source. However, these sources now change too often to use the URL. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) exists in place of a URL as a stable method of linking to the source.

Without DOI

Newspaper articles, electronic books.

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The Pursuit of Quality for Social Work Practice: Three Generations and Counting

Enola proctor.

Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research at Washington University in St. Louis

Social work addresses some of the most complex and intractable human and social problems: poverty, mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and child abuse. Our field may be distinct among professions for its efforts to ameliorate the toughest societal problems, experienced by society’s most vulnerable, while working from under-resourced institutions and settings. Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for rigorous assessment and evaluation.

Moreover, social work confronts these challenges as it is ethically bound to deliver high-quality services. Policy and regulatory requirements increasingly demand that social work deliver and document the effectiveness of highest quality interventions and restrict reimbursement to those services that are documented as evidence based. Social work’s future, its very survival, depends on our ability to deliver services with a solid base of evidence and to document their effectiveness. In the words of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW; n.d.) , social work seeks to “champion social progress powered by science.” The research community needs to support practice through innovative and rigorous science that advances the evidence for interventions to address social work’s grand challenges.

My work seeks to improve the quality of social work practice by pursuing answers to three questions:

• What interventions and services are most effective and thus should be delivered in social work practice?
• How do we measure the impact of those interventions and services? (That is, what outcomes do our interventions achieve?)
• How do we implement the highest quality interventions?

This paper describes this work, demonstrates the substantive and methodological progression across the three questions, assesses what we have learned, and forecasts a research agenda for what we still need to learn. Given Aaron Rosen’s role as my PhD mentor and our many years of collaboration, the paper also addresses the role of research mentoring in advancing our profession’s knowledge base.

What Interventions and Services Are Most Effective?

Answering the question “What services are effective?” requires rigorous testing of clearly specified interventions. The first paper I coauthored with Aaron Rosen—“Specifying the Treatment Process: The Basis for Effectiveness Research” ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 )—provided a framework for evaluating intervention effectiveness. At that time, process and outcomes were jumbled and intertwined concepts. Social work interventions were rarely specified beyond theoretical orientation or level of focus: casework (or direct practice); group work; and macro practice, which included community, agency-level, and policy-focused practice. Moreover, interventions were not named, nor were their components clearly identified. We recognized that gross descriptions of interventions obstruct professional training, preclude fidelity assessment, and prevent accurate tests of effectiveness. Thus, in a series of papers, Rosen and I advocated that social work interventions be specified, clearly labeled, and operationally defined, measured, and tested.

Specifying Interventions

Such specification of interventions is essential to two professional responsibilities: professional education and demonstrating the effectiveness of the field’s interventions. Without specification, interventions cannot be taught. Social work education is all about equipping students with skills to deliver interventions, programs, services, administrative practices, and policies. Teaching interventions requires an ability to name, define, see them in action, measure their presence (or absence), assess the fidelity with which they are delivered, and give feedback to students on how to increase or refine the associated skills.

To advance testing the effectiveness of social work interventions, we drew distinctions between interventions and outcomes and proposed these two constructs as the foci for effectiveness research. We defined interventions as practitioner behaviors that can be volitionally manipulated by practitioners (used or not, varied in intensity and timing), that are defined in detail, can be reliably measured, and can be linked to specific identified outcomes ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ; Rosen & Proctor, 1981 ). This definition foreshadowed the development of treatment manuals, lists of specific evidence-based practices, and calls for monitoring intervention fidelity. Recognizing the variety of intervention types, and to advance their more precise definition and measurement, we proposed that interventions be distinguished in terms of their complexity. Interventive responses comprise discrete or single responses, such as affirmation, expression of empathy, or positive reinforcement. Interventive strategies comprise several different actions that are, together, linked to a designated outcome, such as motivational interviewing. Most complex are interventive programs , which are a variety of intervention actions organized and integrated as a total treatment package; collaborative care for depression or community assertive treatment are examples. To strengthen the professional knowledge base, we also called for social work effectiveness research to begin testing the optimal dose and sequencing of intervention components in relation to attainment of desired outcomes.

Advancing Intervention Effectiveness Research

Our “specifying paper” also was motivated by the paucity of literature at that time on actual social work interventions. Our literature review of 13 major social work journals over 5 years of published research revealed that only 15% of published social work research addressed interventions. About a third of studies described social problems, and about half explored factors associated with the problem ( Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 2003 ). Most troubling was our finding that only 3% of articles described the intervention or its components in sufficient detail for replication in either research or practice. Later, Fraser (2004) found intervention research to comprise only about one fourth of empirical studies in social work. Fortunately, our situation has improved. Intervention research is more frequent in social work publications, thanks largely to the publication policies of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research and Research on Social Work Practice .

Research Priorities

Social work faces important and formidable challenges as it advances research on intervention effectiveness. The practitioner who searches the literature or various intervention lists can find more than 500 practices that are named or that are shown to have evidence from rigorous trials that passes a bar to qualify as evidence-based practices. However, our profession still lacks any organized compendium or taxonomy of interventions that are employed in or found to be effective for social work practice. Existing lists of evidence-based practices, although necessary, are insufficient for social work for several reasons. First, as a 2015 National Academies Institute of Medicine (IOM) report—“Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A Framework for Establishing Evidence-Based Standards” ( IOM, 2015 )—concluded, too few evidence-based practices have been found to be appropriate for low-resource settings or acceptable to minority groups. Second, existing interventions do not adequately reflect the breadth of social work practice. We have too few evidence-based interventions that can inform effective community organization, case management, referral practice, resource development, administrative practice, or policy. Noting that there is far less literature on evidence-based practices relevant to organizational, community, and policy practice, a social work task force responding to the 2015 IOM report recommended that this gap be a target of our educational and research efforts ( National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work, 2016 ). And finally, our field—along with other professions that deliver psychosocial interventions—lacks the kinds of procedure codes that can identify the specific interventions we deliver. Documenting social work activities in agency records is increasingly essential for quality assurance and third-party reimbursement.

Future Directions: Research to Advance Evidence on Interventions

Social work has critically important research needs. Our field needs to advance the evidence base on what interventions work for social work populations, practices, and settings. Responding to the 2015 IOM report, the National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work (2016) identified as a social work priority the development and testing of evidence-based practices relevant to organizational, community, and policy practice. As we advance our intervention effectiveness research, we must respond to the challenge of determining the key mechanisms of change ( National Institute of Mental Health, 2016 ) and identify key modifiable components of packaged interventions ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ). We need to explore the optimal dosage, ordering, or adapted bundling of intervention elements and advance robust, feasible ways to measure and increase fidelity ( Jaccard, 2016 ). We also need to conduct research on which interventions are most appropriate, acceptable, and effective with various client groups ( Zayas, 2003 ; Videka, 2003 ).

Documenting the Impact of Interventions: Specifying and Measuring Outcomes

Outcomes are key to documenting the impact of social work interventions. My 1978 “specifying” paper with Rosen emphasized that the effectiveness of social work practice could not be adequately evaluated without clear specification and measurement of various types of outcomes. In that paper, we argued that the profession cannot rely only on an assertion of effectiveness. The field must also calibrate, calculate, and communicate its impact.

The nursing profession’s highly successful campaign, based on outcomes research, positioned that field to claim that “nurses save lives.” Nurse staffing ratios were associated with in-hospital and 30-day mortality, independent of patient characteristics, hospital characteristics, or medical treatment ( Person et al., 2004 ). In contrast, social work has often described—sometimes advertised—itself as the low-cost profession. The claim of “cheapest service” may have some strategic advantage in turf competition with other professions. But social work can do better. Our research base can and should demonstrate the value of our work by naming and quantifying the outcomes—the added value of social work interventions.

As a start to this work—a beginning step in compiling evidence about the impact of social work interventions—our team set out to identify the outcomes associated with social work practice. We felt that identifying and naming outcomes is essential for conveying what social work is about. Moreover, outcomes should serve as the focus for evaluating the effectiveness of social work interventions.

We produced two taxonomies of outcomes reflected in published evaluations of social work interventions ( Proctor, Rosen, & Rhee, 2002 ; Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 2003 ). They included such outcomes as change in clients’ social functioning, resource procurement, problem or symptom reduction, and safety. They exemplify the importance of naming and measuring what our profession can contribute to society. Although social work’s growing body of effectiveness research typically reports outcomes of the interventions being tested, the literature has not, in the intervening 20 years, addressed the collective set of outcomes for our field.

Fortunately, the Grand Challenges for Social Work (AASWSW, n.d.) now provide a framework for communicating social work’s goals. They reflect social work’s added value: improving individual and family well-being, strengthening social fabric, and helping to create a more just society. The Grand Challenges for Social Work include ensuring healthy development for all youth, closing the health gap, stopping family violence, advancing long and productive lives, eradicating social isolation, ending homelessness, creating social responses to a changing environment, harnessing technology for social good, promoting smart decarceration, reducing extreme economic inequality, building financial capability for all, and achieving equal opportunity and justice ( AASWSW, n.d. ).

These important goals appropriately reflect much of what we are all about in social work, and our entire field has been galvanized—energized by the power of these grand challenges. However, the grand challenges require setting specific benchmarks—targets that reflect how far our professional actions can expect to take us, or in some areas, how far we have come in meeting the challenge.

For the past decade, care delivery systems and payment reforms have required measures for tracking performance. Quality measures have become critical tools for all service providers and organizations ( IOM, 2015 ). The IOM defines quality of care as “the degree to which … services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired … outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge” ( Lohr, 1990 , p. 21). Quality measures are important at multiple levels of service delivery: at the client level, at the practitioner level, at the organization level, and at the policy level. The National Quality Forum has established five criteria for quality measures: They should address (a) the most important, (b) the most scientifically valid, (c) the most feasible or least burdensome, (d) the most usable, and (e) the most harmonious set of measures ( IOM, 2015 .) Quality measures have been advanced by accrediting groups (e.g., the Joint Commission of the National Committee for Quality Assurance), professional societies, and federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. However, quality measures are lacking for key areas of social work practice, including mental health and substance-use treatment. And of the 55 nationally endorsed measures related to mental health and substance use, only two address a psychosocial intervention. Measures used for accreditation and certification purposes often reflect structural capabilities of organizations and their resource use, not the infrastructure required to deliver high-quality services ( IOM, 2015 ). I am not aware of any quality measure developed by our own professional societies or agreed upon across our field.

Future Directions: Research on Quality Monitoring and Measure Development

Although social work as a field lacks a strong tradition of measuring and assessing quality ( Megivern et al., 2007 ; McMillen et al., 2005 ; Proctor, Powell, & McMillen, 2012 ), social work’s role in the quality workforce is becoming better understood ( McMillen & Raffol, 2016 ). The small number of established and endorsed quality measures reflects both limitations in the evidence for effective interventions and challenges in obtaining the detailed information necessary to support quality measurement ( IOM, 2015 ). According to the National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work (2016) , developing quality measures to capture use of evidence-based interventions is essential for the survival of social work practice in many settings. The task force recommends that social work organizations develop relevant and viable quality measures and that social workers actively influence the implementation of quality measures in their practice settings.

How to Implement Evidence-Based Care

A third and more recent focus of my work addresses this question: How do we implement evidence-based care in agencies and communities? Despite our progress in developing proven interventions, most clients—whether served by social workers or other providers—do not receive evidence-based care. A growing number of studies are assessing the extent to which clients—in specific settings or communities—receive evidence-based interventions. Kohl, Schurer, and Bellamy (2009) examined quality in a core area of social work: training for parents at risk for child maltreatment. The team examined the parent services and their level of empirical support in community agencies, staffed largely by master’s-level social workers. Of 35 identified treatment programs offered to families, only 11% were “well-established empirically supported interventions,” with another 20% containing some hallmarks of empirically supported interventions ( Kohl et al., 2009 ). This study reveals a sizable implementation gap, with most of the programs delivered lacking scientific validation.

Similar quality gaps are apparent in other settings where social workers deliver services. Studies show that only 19.3% of school mental health professionals and 36.8% of community mental health professionals working in Virginia’s schools and community mental health centers report using any evidence-based substance-abuse prevention programs ( Evans, Koch, Brady, Meszaros, & Sadler, 2013 ). In mental health, where social workers have long delivered the bulk of services, only 40% to 50% of people with mental disorders receive any treatment ( Kessler, Chiu, Demler, Merikangas, & Walters, 2005 ; Merikangas et al., 2011 ), and of those receiving treatment, a fraction receive what could be considered “quality” treatment ( Wang, Demler, & Kessler, 2002 ; Wang et al., 2005 ). These and other studies indicate that, despite progress in developing proven interventions, most clients do not receive evidence-based care. In light of the growth of evidence-based practice, this fact is troubling evidence that testing interventions and publishing the findings is not sufficient to improve quality.

So, how do we get these interventions in place? What is needed to enable social workers to deliver, and clients to receive, high-quality care? In addition to developing and testing evidence-based interventions, what else is needed to improve the quality of social work practice? My work has focused on advancing quality of services through two paths.

Making Effective Interventions Accessible to Providers: Intervention Reviews and Taxonomies

First, we have advocated that research evidence be synthesized and made available to front-line practitioners. In a research-active field where new knowledge is constantly produced, practitioners should not be expected to rely on journal publications alone for information about effective approaches to achieve desired outcomes. Mastering a rapidly expanding professional evidence base has been characterized as a nearly unachievable challenge for practitioners ( Greenfield, 2017 ). Reviews should critique and clarify the intervention’s effectiveness as tested in specific settings, populations, and contexts, answering the question, “What works where, and with whom?” Even more valuable are studies of comparative effectiveness—those that answer, “Which intervention approach works better, where, and when?”

Taxonomies of clearly and consistently labeled interventions will enhance their accessibility and the usefulness of research reports and systematic reviews. A pre-requisite is the consistent naming of interventions. A persistent challenge is the wide variation in names or labels for interventive procedures and programs. Our professional activities are the basis for our societal sanction, and they must be capable of being accurately labeled and documented if we are to describe what our profession “does” to advance social welfare. Increasingly, and in short order, that documentation will be in electronic records that are scrutinized by third parties for purposes of reimbursement and assessment of value toward outcome attainment.

How should intervention research and reviews be organized? Currently, several websites provide lists of evidence-based practices, some with links, citations, or information about dissemination and implementation organizations that provide training and facilitation to adopters. Practitioners and administrators find such lists helpful but often note the challenge in determining which are most appropriate for their needs. In the words of one agency leader, “The drug companies are great at presenting [intervention information] in a very easy form to use. We don’t have people coming and saying, ‘Ah, let me tell you about the best evidence-based practice for cognitive behavioral therapy for depression,’” ( Proctor et al., 2007 , p. 483). We have called for the field to devise decision aids for practitioners to enhance access to the best available empirical knowledge about interventions ( Proctor et al., 2002 ; Proctor & Rosen, 2008 ; Rosen et al., 2003 ). We proposed that intervention taxonomies be organized around outcomes pursued in social work practice, and we developed such a taxonomy based on eight domains of outcomes—those most frequently tested in social work journals. Given the field’s progress in identifying its grand challenges, its associated outcomes could well serve as the organizing focus, with research-tested interventions listed for each challenge. Compiling the interventions, programs, and services that are shown—through research—to help achieve one of the challenges would surely advance our field.

We further urged profession-wide efforts to develop social work practice guidelines from intervention taxonomies ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). Practice guidelines are systematically compiled, critiqued, and organized statements about the effectiveness of interventions that are organized in a way to help practitioners select and use the most effective and appropriate approaches for addressing client problems and pursuing desired outcomes.

At that time, we proposed that our published taxonomy of social work interventions could provide a beginning architecture for social work guidelines ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). In 2000, we organized a conference for thought leaders in social work practice. This talented group wrestled with and formulated recommendations for tackling the professional, research, and training requisites to developing social work practice guidelines to enable researchers to access and apply the best available knowledge about interventions ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). Fifteen years later, however, the need remains for social work to synthesize its intervention research. Psychology and psychiatry, along with most fields of medical practice, have developed practice guidelines. Although their acceptance and adherence is fraught with challenges, guidelines make evidence more accessible and enable quality monitoring. Yet, guidelines still do not exist for social work.

The 2015 IOM report, “Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A Framework for Establishing Evidence-Based Standards,” includes a conclusion that information on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions is not routinely available to service consumers, providers, and payers, nor is it synthesized. That 2015 IOM report called for systematic reviews to inform clinical guidelines for psychosocial interventions. This report defined psychosocial interventions broadly, encompassing “interpersonal or informational activities, techniques, or strategies that target biological, behavioral, cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, social, or environmental factors with the aim of reducing symptoms and improving functioning or well-being” ( IOM, 2015 , p. 5). These interventions are social work’s domain; they are delivered in the very settings where social workers dominate (behavioral health, schools, criminal justice, child welfare, and immigrant services); and they encompass populations across the entire lifespan within all sociodemographic groups and vulnerable populations. Accordingly, the National Task Force on Evidence Based Practice in Social Work (2016) has recommended the conduct of more systematic reviews of the evidence supporting social work interventions.

If systematic reviews are to lead to guidelines for evidence-based psychosocial interventions, social work needs to be at the table, and social work research must provide the foundation. Whether social work develops its own guidelines or helps lead the development of profession-independent guidelines as recommended by the IOM committee, guidelines need to be detailed enough to guide practice. That is, they need to be accompanied by treatment manuals and informed by research that details the effect of moderator variables and contextual factors reflecting diverse clientele, social determinants of health, and setting resource challenges. The IOM report “Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust” sets criteria for guideline development processes ( IOM, 2011 ). Moreover, social work systematic reviews of research and any associated evidence-based guidelines need to be organized around meaningful taxonomies.

Advancing the Science of Implementation

As a second path to ensuring the delivery of high-quality care, my research has focused on advancing the science of implementation. Implementation research seeks to inform how to deliver evidence-based interventions, programs, and policies into real-world settings so their benefits can be realized and sustained. The ultimate aim of implementation research is building a base of evidence about the most effective processes and strategies for improving service delivery. Implementation research builds upon effectiveness research then seeks to discover how to use specific implementation strategies and move those interventions into specific settings, extending their availability, reach, and benefits to clients and communities. Accordingly, implementation strategies must address the challenges of the service system (e.g., specialty mental health, schools, criminal justice system, health settings) and practice settings (e.g., community agency, national employee assistance programs, office-based practice), and the human capital challenge of staff training and support.

In an approach that echoes themes in an early paper, “Specifying the Treatment Process—The Basis for Effectiveness Research” ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ), my work once again tackled the challenge of specifying a heretofore vague process—this time, not the intervention process, but the implementation process. As a first step, our team developed a taxonomy of implementation outcomes ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), which enable a direct test of whether or not a given intervention is adopted and delivered. Although it is overlooked in other types of research, implementation science focuses on this distinct type of outcome. Explicit examination of implementation outcomes is key to an important research distinction. Often, evaluations yield disappointing results about an intervention, showing that the expected and desired outcomes are not attained. This might mean that the intervention was not effective. However, just as likely, it could mean that the intervention was not actually delivered, or it was not delivered with fidelity. Implementation outcomes help identify the roadblocks on the way to intervention adoption and delivery.

Our 2011 taxonomy of implementation outcomes ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), became the framework for two national repositories of measures for implementation research: the Seattle Implementation Research Collaborative ( Lewis et al., 2015 ) and the National Institutes of Health GEM measures database ( Rabin et al., 2012 ). These repositories of implementation outcomes seek to harmonize and increase the rigor of measurement in implementation science.

We also have developed taxonomies of implementation strategies ( Powell et al., 2012 ; Powell et al., 2015 ; Waltz et al., 2014 , 2015) . Implementation strategies are interventions for system change—how organizations, communities, and providers can learn to deliver new and more effective practices ( Powell et al., 2012 ).

A conversation with a key practice leader stimulated my interest in implementation strategies. Shortly after our school endorsed an MSW curriculum emphasizing evidence-based practices, a pioneering CEO of a major social service agency in St. Louis met with me and asked,

Enola Proctor, I get the importance of delivering evidence based practices. My organization delivers over 20 programs and interventions, and I believe only a handful of them are really evidence based. I want to decrease our provision of ineffective care, and increase our delivery of evidence-based practices. But how? What are the evidence-based ways I, as an agency director, can transform my agency so that we can deliver evidence-based practices?

That agency director was asking a question of how . He was asking for evidence-based implementation strategies. Moving effective programs and practices into routine care settings requires the skillful use of implementation strategies, defined as systematic “methods or techniques used to enhance the adoption, implementation, and sustainability of a clinical program or practice into routine service” ( Proctor et al., 2013 , p. 2).

This question has shaped my work for the past 15 years, as well as the research priorities of several funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the World Health Organization. Indeed, a National Institutes of Health program announcement—Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health ( National Institutes of Health, 2016 )—identified the discovery of effective implementation strategies as a primary purpose of implementation science. To date, the implementation science literature cannot yet answer that important question, but we are making progress.

To identify implementation strategies, our teams first turned to the literature—a literature that we found to be scattered across a wide range of journals and disciplines. Most articles were not empirical, and most articles used widely differing terms to characterize implementation strategies. We conducted a structured literature review to generate common nomenclature and a taxonomy of implementation strategies. That review yielded 63 distinct implementation strategies, which fell into six groupings: planning, educating, financing, restructuring, managing quality, and attending to policy context ( Powell et al., 2012 ).

Our team refined that compilation, using Delphi techniques and concept mapping to develop conceptually distinct categories of implementation strategies ( Powell et al., 2015 ; Waltz et al., 2014 ). The refined compilation of 73 discrete implementation strategies was then further organized into nine clusters:

• changing agency infrastructure,
• using financial strategies,
• supporting clinicians,
• providing interactive assistance,
• training and educating stakeholders,
• adapting and tailoring interventions to context,
• developing stakeholder relationships,
• using evaluative and iterative strategies, and
• engaging consumers.

These taxonomies of implementation strategies position the field for more robust research on implementation processes. The language used to describe implementation strategies has not yet “gelled” and has been described as a “Tower of Babel” ( McKibbon et al., 2010 ). Therefore, we also developed guidelines for reporting the components of strategies ( Proctor et al., 2013 ) so researchers and implementers would have more behaviorally specific information about what a strategy is, who does it, when, and for how long. The value of such reporting guidelines is illustrated in the work of Gold and colleagues (2016) .

What have we learned, through our own program of research on implementation strategies—the “how to” of improving practice? First, we have been able to identify from practice-based evidence the implementation strategies used most often. Using novel activity logs to track implementation strategies, Bunger and colleagues (2017) found that strategies such as quality improvement tools, using data experts, providing supervision, and sending clinical reminders were frequently used to facilitate delivery of behavioral health interventions within a child-welfare setting and were perceived by agency leadership as contributing to project success.

Second, reflecting the complexity of quality improvement processes, we have learned that there is no magic bullet ( Powell, Proctor, & Glass, 2013 ). Our study of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinics working to implement evidence-based HIV treatment found that implementers used an average of 25 (plus or minus 14) different implementation strategies ( Rogal, et al., 2017 ). Moreover, the number of implementation strategies used was positively associated with the number of new treatment starts. These findings suggest that implementing new interventions requires considerable effort and resources.

To advance our understanding of the effectiveness of implementation strategies, our teams have conducted a systematic review ( Powell et al., 2013 ), tested specific strategies, and captured practice-based evidence from on-the-ground implementers. Testing the effectiveness of implementation strategies has been identified as a top research priority by the IOM (2009) . In work with Charles Glisson in St. Louis, our 15-agency-based randomized clinical trial found that an organizational-focused intervention—the attachment, regulatory, and competency model—improved agency culture and climate, stimulated more clinicians to enroll in evidence-based-practice training, and boosted clinical effect sizes of various evidence-based practices ( Glisson, Williams, Hemmelgarn, Proctor, & Green, 2016a , 2016b ). And in a hospital critical care unit, the implementation strategies of developing a team, selecting and using champions, provider education sessions, and audit and feedback helped increase team adherence to phlebotomy guidelines ( Steffen et al., in press ).

We are also learning about the value of different strategies. Experts in implementation science and implementation practice identified as most important the strategies of “use evaluate and iterative approaches” and “train and educate stakeholders.” Reported as less helpful were such strategies as “access new funding streams” and “remind clinicians of practices to use” ( Waltz et al., 2015 ). Successful implementers in Veterans Affairs clinics relied more heavily on such strategies as “change physical structures and equipment” and “facilitate relay of clinical data to providers” than did less successful implementers ( Rogal et al., 2017 ).

Many strategies have yet to be investigated empirically, as has the role of dissemination and implementation organizations—organizations that function to promote, provide information about, provide training in, and scale up specific treatments. Most evidence-based practices used in behavioral health, including most listed on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Registry of Promising and Effective Practices, are disseminated and distributed by dissemination and implementation organizations. Unlike drugs and devices, psychosocial interventions have no Federal Drug Administration-like delivery system. Kreuter and Casey (2012) urge better understanding and use of the intervention “delivery system,” or mechanisms to bring treatment discoveries to the attention of practitioners and into use in practice settings.

Implementation strategies have been shown to boost clinical effectiveness ( Glisson et al., 2010 ), reduce staff turnover ( Aarons, Sommerfield, Hect, Silvosky, & Chaffin, 2009 ) and help reduce disparities in care ( Balicer et al., 2015 ).

Future directions: Research on implementation strategies

My work in implementation science has helped build intellectual capital for the rapidly growing field of dissemination and implementation science, leading teams to distinguish, clearly define, develop taxonomies, and stimulate more systematic work to advance the conceptual, linguistic, and methodological clarity in the field. Yet, we continue to lack understanding of many issues. What strategies are used in usual implementation practice, by whom, for which empirically supported interventions? What strategies are effective in which organizational and policy contexts? Which strategies are effective in attaining which specific implementation outcomes? For example, are the strategies that are effective for initial adoption also effective for scale up, spread, and sustained use of interventions? Social workers have the skill set for roles as implementation facilitators, and refining packages of implementation strategies that are effective in social service and behavioral health settings could boost the visibility, scale, and impact of our work.

The Third Generation and Counting

Social work faces grand, often daunting challenges. We need to develop a more robust base of evidence about the effectiveness of interventions and make that evidence more relevant, accessible, and applicable to social work practitioners, whether they work in communities, agencies, policy arenas, or a host of novel settings. We need to advance measurement-based care so our value as a field is recognized. We need to know how to bring proven interventions to scale for population-level impact. We need to discover ways to build capacity of social service agencies and the communities in which they reside. And we need to learn how to sustain advances in care once we achieve them ( Proctor et al., 2015 ). Our challenges are indeed grand, far outstripping our resources.

So how dare we speak of a quality quest? Does it not seem audacious to seek the highest standards in caring for the most vulnerable, especially in an era when we face a new political climate that threatens vulnerable groups and promises to strip resources from health and social services? Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for assessment and evaluation. Quality may be an audacious goal, but as social workers we can pursue no less. By virtue of our code of ethics, our commitment to equity, and our skills in intervening on multiple levels of systems and communities, social workers are ideally suited for advancing quality.

Who will conduct the needed research? Who will pioneer its translation to improving practice? Social work practice can be only as strong as its research base; the responsibility for developing that base, and hence improve practice, is lodged within social work research.

If my greatest challenge is pursuing this quest, my greatest joy is in mentoring the next generation for this work. My research mentoring has always been guided by the view that the ultimate purpose of research in the helping professions is the production and systemization of knowledge for use by practitioners ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ). For 27 years, the National Institute of Mental Health has supported training in mental health services research based in the Center for Mental Health Services Research ( Hasche, Perron, & Proctor, 2009 ; Proctor & McMillen, 2008 ). And, with colleague John Landsverk, we are launching my sixth year leading the Implementation Research Institute, a training program for implementation science supported by the National Institute of Mental Health ( Proctor et al., 2013 ). We have trained more than 50 social work, psychology, anthropology, and physician researchers in implementation science for mental health. With three more cohorts to go, we are working to assess what works in research training for implementation science. Using bibliometric analysis, we have learned that intensive training and mentoring increases research productivity in the form of published papers and grants that address how to implement evidence-based care in mental health and addictions. And, through use of social network analysis, we have learned that every “dose” of mentoring increases scholarly collaboration when measured two years later ( Luke, Baumann, Carothers, Landsverk, & Proctor, 2016 ).

As his student, I was privileged to learn lessons in mentoring from Aaron Rosen. He treated his students as colleagues, he invited them in to work on the most challenging of questions, and he pursued his work with joy. When he treated me as a colleague, I felt empowered. When he invited me to work with him on the field’s most vexing challenges, I felt inspired. And as he worked with joy, I learned that work pursued with joy doesn’t feel like work at all. And now the third, fourth, and fifth generations of social work researchers are pursuing tough challenges and the quality quest for social work practice. May seasoned and junior researchers work collegially and with joy, tackling the profession’s toughest research challenges, including the quest for high-quality social work services.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by IRI (5R25MH0809160), Washington University ICTS (2UL1 TR000448-08), Center for Mental Health Services Research, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Center for Dissemination and Implementation, Institute for Public Health, Washington University in St. Louis.

This invited article is based on the 2017 Aaron Rosen Lecture presented by Enola Proctor at the Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference—“Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth”—held January 11–15, 2017, in New Orleans, LA. The annual Aaron Rosen Lecture features distinguished scholars who have accumulated a body of significant and innovative scholarship relevant to practice, the research base for practice, or effective utilization of research in practice.

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• Waltz TJ, Powell BJ, Matthieu MM, Damschroder LJ, Chinman MJ, Smith JL, Kirchner JE. Use of concept mapping to characterize relationships among implementation strategies and assess their feasibility and importance: Results from the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC) study. Implementation Science. 2015; 10 (109):1–8. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-015-0295-0 . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wang PS, Lane M, Olfson M, Pincus HA, Wells KB, Kessler RC. Twelvemonth use of mental health services in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry. 2005; 62 (6):629–640. doi: 10.1001/archpsyc.62.6.629. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
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• Zayas L. Service delivery factors in the development of practice guidelines. In: Rosen A, Proctor EK, editors. Developing practice guidelines for social work intervention: Issues, methods, and research agenda. New York, NY: Columbia University Press; 2003. pp. 169–192. https://doi.org/10.7312/rose12310-010 . [ Google Scholar ]

University of Houston Libraries

Social work resources.

• About This Guide
• Scholarly Articles
• Books and eBooks
• Tests and Measures
• Clinical Work Resources
• Data and Statistics
• Video Collections
• Web Resources
• Citation Resources

This page provides links to journals where you can find articles and clinical information to help you with your research.

Recommended Resources

• Social Work & Related Disciplines Databases

Evidence-Based Practice Databases

• Biomedicine Databases
• Dissertations & Theses Databases

Clinical Tools

Social Work & Related Disciplines Databases

• ERIC (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window ERIC, the Educational Resource Information Center, provides access to education literature and resources. The database provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index. ERIC provides full text of more than 2,200 digests along with references for additional information and citations and abstracts from over 1,000 educational and education-related journals.
• PsycInfo This link opens in a new window APA PsycInfo, American Psychological Association’s (APA) renowned resource for abstracts of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations, is the largest resource devoted to peer-reviewed literature in behavioral science and mental health. It contains approximately 3 million citations and summaries dating as far back as the 1600s with DOIs for over 1.4 million records. Journal coverage, which spans from the 1800s to present, includes international material selected from around 2,400 periodicals in dozens of languages.
• Social Work Abstracts This link opens in a new window Covers the core social work and human services literature, providing indexing and abstracts for >450 journals. The database is updated rather slowly - use SocIndex with Full Text for the most current research.
• Web of Science This link opens in a new window Web of Science is a comprehensive research platform. Journal articles, patents, websites, conference proceedings, Open Access material—all can be accessed through one interface, using a variety of powerful search and analysis tools. Web of Science Core Collection is a painstakingly selected, actively curated database of the journals that researchers themselves have judged to be the most important and useful in their fields
• See all social work databases here.
• CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window This database provides access to health science literature related to nursing and allied health disciplines. In addition, it includes standards of practice and evidence-based care guidelines.
• PubMed Clinical Queries PubMed Clinical Queries allows you to quickly and easily search for relevant clinical literature on etiology, prognosis, diagnosis and therapy of diseases and diagnostics. PubMed Clinical Queries is designed to filter one search by three clinical research areas: Clinical Study Categories, Systematic Reviews, and Medical Genetics.

Biomedicine Databases

• PubMed This link opens in a new window PubMed® comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
• MEDLINE (PubMed) This link opens in a new window PubMed® comprises more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books.
• EMBASE This link opens in a new window EMBASE is a major biomedical and pharmaceutical database indexing over 3,500 international journals in the following fields: drug research, pharmacology, pharmaceutics, toxicology, clinical and experimental human medicine, health policy and management, public health, occupational health, environmental health, drug dependence and abuse, psychiatry, forensic medicine, and biomedical engineering/instrumentation. There is selective coverage for nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, psychology, and alternative medicine.

Dissertations & Theses Databases

• UpToDate This link opens in a new window A point-of-care clinical resource. Useful for quick information about conditions, drugs, etc.
• DynaMed This link opens in a new window DynaMed is a clinical reference tool of more than 3000 topics designed for physicians and health care professionals for use primarily at the point-of-care. DynaMed is updated daily and monitors the content of over 500 medical journal and systemic evidence review databases.

Top Social Work Journals

The journals listed below are the top 5 ranked journals for Social Work based on 5-year impact factors as described in Journal Citation Reports  for the subject: 'Social Work'

These journal titles are supplied to give you the opportunity to browse the literature, see samples of work in the field, and give you names to look out for in this subject area.

For any kind of in depth searching, however, you'll want to use a database to search across many journals.

• Trauma, Violence & Abuse
• Child Abuse & Neglect
• Child Maltreatment
• American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
• American Journal of Community Psychology
• More Social Work Journals

What is a library database?

Your instructor or subject librarian may throw around the term "library database" a lot, but what exactly do they mean? This video from the University of Houston Libraries explains the term and how you can use databases for research.

Transcript available through YouTube .

Remote Access

You can access UH Libraries' online resources from anywhere!

To access online resources (e.g. databases, articles) while off campus, you will be asked to log in with your  CourgarNet account . Once you log in, you will be redirected to the online resource you selected. You must be a current student, faculty, or staff.

If you do not know your CougarNet account information, then please contact UIT Support Center at:

713-743-1411

or  chat with a support representative .

If you have any difficulties accessing UH Libraries' online resources, please use  this form  to let us know!

• << Previous: About This Guide
• Next: Books and eBooks >>

Search for Journals

Search by title or ISBN to see if UH Libraries has access to a particular journal. Journal search.

• Last Updated: Aug 19, 2024 11:51 AM
• URL: https://guides.lib.uh.edu/socialwork

• EMU Library
• Research Guides

Social Work - Free Research Sources

• Free Professional Resources

About this Guide

Free research databases, data & statistics, search public policy groups & think tanks, systematic reviews.

• Library Services for Alumni

Current EMU students have access to many online resources through library subscriptions . But these resources are not available to alumni or others unless you visit the library in-person.

This guide lists free research resources that provide useful information for social work professionals who are not currently EMU students.

Most of these resources are provided by government agencies and offer summaries of research articles and other sources, and some full-text sources (free or with cost.) Local public libraries might offer interlibrary loan services to provide copies of articles not available online.  Visit the EMU library in person to use EMU online journals and databases.

• Child Welfare Information Gateway Information and resources on child welfare topic including child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption. Many resources are available online for free. The Child Welfare Information Gateway is provided by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Administration for Children & Families.
• Cochrane Summaries Free summaries of systematic reviews in human health care and health policy, including mental health, addiction, and behavioral treatments.
• ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) ERIC focuses on education and children and also includes information from some social work journals. Resources include journal articles, papers, and other research reports, with some available in full-text. ERIC is also available in-person at the EMU library, with links to EMU full-text online journals.
• Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center Resources from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
• Google Scholar Scholarly articles, books, research reports, theses, working papers, cited sources. Some sources are available free online, others are not.
• JSTOR - Free access JSTOR provides free access to everyone to a limited number of articles each month through their register and read program.
• MeL Databases MeL Databases (eResources) are available online to all Michigan residents. They include some professional and academic journals. Many articles are available as full-text.
• National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Database NCJRS includes summaries of more than 200,000 criminal justice, juvenile justice, and substance abuse resources. A few are available online, others you can order from NCJRS.
• PubMed References for scholarly and professional articles in the health sciences and life sciences, some links to full-text.
• State Child Abuse & Neglect (SCAN) Policies Child abuse and neglect definitions, laws, and policies for U.S. states.
• Census Data Population, housing, economic, and geographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
• Autism Spectrum Disorders Data & Statistics Provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. See the links and references on this page for more detailed data.
• Child Research Data & Publications From the Children's Defense Fund.
• Children's Bureau: Statistics & Research Data on topics including including adoption, foster care, and child abuse and neglect.

Find think tanks by topic:

• American Policy Directory Policy organizations grouped by general topic area.

Learn about how think tanks work and their biases:

• Media bias links Check for the potential bias of a media source or organization.
• Writing about think tanks and using their research: A cautionary tip sheet How to evaluate think tanks and the information they provide.
• Fake think tanks fuel fake news Discusses the problem of organizations that claim to be think tanks but that distribute propaganda rather than real science. Article by Emma Gray Ellis, Jan. 24, 2017, wired.com.

Systematic reviews summarize the best available primary research on a specific question. Learn more:   What is a systematic review?

• Campbell Collaboration Library Selected systematic reviews related to education, crime and justice, social welfare, and other topics.
• Next: Library Services for Alumni >>

Guide created by Sara Memmott, Social Work Librarian .

Contact me: [email protected]

Library of Michigan Databases

Apply online for a Library of Michigan card and get access to their newspaper, history, and other databases . All Michigan residents and also out-of-state students enrolled in a Michigan college or university are eligible.

• Last Updated: Aug 6, 2024 4:48 PM
• URL: https://guides.emich.edu/socialworkfree