Search for your topic in these scholarly article databases.
Search Tips:
If your health issue is described in more than one word, put it in quotes. E.g. "Reactive Attachment Disorder" or "Adverse Childhood Experiences"
Add the term "social work" (in quotes!) to your other search term to narrow down your results to more relevant articles. If you don't add "social work" to your search, you'll retrieve many articles from psychology, medicine, education and other areas that are not very relevant (and can be more challenging to read and understand).
Reference source (sometimes called background sources) are academic, subject-specific encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks that provide information about concepts, events, issues, or people.
They can be excellent sources of information on mental health disorders, including diagnostic descriptions, nature, causes, prevalence, interventions and treatments.
Try some of the sources listed here to find the information required in your literature review. These types of sources can be used in conjunction with the required peer-reviewed journal articles to help you understand the information you find in those articles.
Combines Canadian magazines, newspapers, newswires, reference books, biographies, and an image collection to create a collection of regional full text content.
Full-text access to hundreds of periodicals from 1983 onwards. Topics including current events, health, technology, arts, history, literature, culture, and business, with a focus on both academic and mainstream titles.
This short video from Western University explains what it is and why it's useful.
Some examples of grey literature:
Grey literature includes research- and evidence-based documents that are written by academic or professional experts on topics relevant to their professions, clients, communities or society in general (and that are not formally published in a journal or book).
These documents are produced by various groups including government agencies, non-government/not-for-profit organizations, industry groups, think tanks, research centres, service agencies, and professional organizations.
Grey literature tends to be more practice-oriented -- it reports on activities done by an organization or on the research they do, and is published with professionals, practitioners, and policy makers in mind.
Grey literature can be published and shared online with little or no cost, so it is often widely accessible to everyone (if you know how to find it!).
It can provide examples of best practices, guidelines, and recommendations for things like service provision, program design and implementation, policy development, and advocacy.
Peer reviewed research is slow to produce and publish, and sometimes the most recent and relevant information is shared in a report rather than a journal article.
This video from Royal Roads University demonstrates how to do an advanced Google search to find grey literature on the Web.
Policy Commons is a one-stop community platform for objective, fact-based research from the world’s leading policy experts, nonpartisan think tanks, IGOs and NGOs.
The Web is the best place to find these types of documents.
Browse this list of think tanks and research organizations for ones who research and report on social issues in Canada. Search their websites for the publications and other information resources they provide.
Often, these types of documents do not appear in the results of a basic Google search.
Use advanced search techniques in Google to find reports and other documents that don't come up in a simple search (often because they are attached as PDFs rather than as part of the website content).
You can simply search the name of an organization or another relevant keyword, and include the word report.
Example: indigenous child family canada report
Example: calgaryunitedway.org report
Hint: Search for the word report in the URL to find these specific types of documents
Example: site:edmontonsocialplanning.ca inurl:report
Hint: Search for specific file types to find reports
Example (searching a specific website): site:edmontonsocialplanning.ca type:pdf
Example (using keywords): indigenous child family canada type:pdf
Explores the concept of learning by presenting research and illustrations from practice on three major topics: adverse childhood experiences, attachment, and environment.
