Family Life Education Methodology: Helpful Databases

This video shows how to access and search the databases for scholarly articles. To see a larger version click on the video.

Databases are search engines that the library purchases (they are not free) that index articles from journals. You can use the databases to search through multiple journals at the same time by keyword. Below are some databases that you may find useful. 

When searching in the databases for articles the following tips may help you.

* - This is the truncation symbol, it searches for variations of your term. For example: parent* will return: parent, parents, parenting, parental

AND - Use the word AND when you want to combine search terms (this will reduce the number of items found). For example: childrearing and China will find articles that discuss childrearing and china.

OR - Use the word OR when you are searching for a topic that may have different names (this will expand the number of items found). For example: childrearing OR parenting will find articles with either of these words.

NOT - Use the word NOT when you want to exclude certain terms from your results. For example: qualitative NOT mixed methods will find articles that talk about qualitative research but exclude any that are mixed methods.