Social Work Research Guide
This guide will help you find books, articles, websites and other information sources you'll need for research assignments in your program.
This guide also provides some research tips, strategies and tools. If you need more help finding, using, or evaluating information sources, click on Research Help on the right to contact your Subject Librarian.
Article Databases
You can search our article databases (collections of journal, newspaper and magazine articles). If the full text of the article is not in the database, click on the "Look for a Copy" or "Find Full Text" link.
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Child Development and Adolescent StudiesThis bibliographic database of current and historical literature related to growth and development of children through the age of 21.
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SocINDEX with Full TextSocINDEX offers comprehensive coverage of sociology, encompassing sociology sub-disciplines and closely related areas of study.
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CINAHL Plus with Full TextA source of full text for nursing and allied health journals providing full text for journals indexed in CINAHL.
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PsycInfoContains citations and summaries of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, books, and dissertations in psychology and related disciplines.
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Google ScholarGoogle Scholar provides searching of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources. This MRU specific link connects users to items available full text via MRU.
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iPortalContains articles, images, videos, data, oral histories, websites and more. Includes sections on economic development, science, health and Indigenous knowledge.
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Canada Commons - DocumentsThis collection contains monographs of research papers, reports, studies, policy papers & briefs, environmental scans and more.
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Social Work CommonsFree, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Includes peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, and conference proceedings.
Creating Keywords for Database Searching
Try to break down your topic into the main concepts.
For example: 1. Client 2. Issue 3. Intervention or Approach
Brainstorm to think of synonyms, broader terms and narrower terms to describe each of these concepts.
Example: You are developing an intervention plan for an adolescent female client with problematic alcohol and drug use. You are considering referring them to a group therapy program.
| Client | Issue | Intervention or Practice Model | Theory or Approach |
| adolescent | drug abuse | narrative therapy | feminist |
| teen | alcohol use | cognitive behavioral therapy | trauma-informed |
| youth | substance misuse | family therapy | psychosocial |
Your database search might look like this:
adolescen* AND "substance abuse" AND (therapy OR treatment)
^ Note: asterisks (*) search for different endings of words, and quotations marks (" ") search for phrases of two or more words.^
If your first search doesn't get good results, try substituting one or more of the keywords with some of the synonyms you have found from brainstorming or the ones you've seen in used in articles.
Help! It is asking me to pay to open an article
Good news: As an MRU student you never need to pay for an article.
If you find an article in Google that blocks the full text, try these steps:
- Step 1: Copy the article title → paste into LibrarySearch. If MRU subscribes, you’ll see a link to full text.
- Step 2: Not available? Request it for free through our Interlibrary Loan service.
Using Google Scholar at home? Adjust the settings so MRU links show up:
- Go to ☰ Menu → Settings
- Select Library Links
- Search “Mount Royal” and check the box for Full text @ MRU Library
- Click Save
After setup: Articles MRU pays for will be flagged in your search results with a link like this:
