Social Work Practice: Staying Informed

A database of resources curated by The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.

"The Alcohol Studies Database contains citations of over 80,000 documents indexed by the Rutgers University Center of Alcohol Studies since 1987. The primary focus of the database is on research and professional materials dealing with beverage alcohol, its use and related consequences."

Campbell Collaboration is an international group of research organizations which provide systematic reviews of the affects of social interventions. Campbell consists of five research groups specializing in social welfare, crime & justice, education, methodology and users groups. Systematic reviews provide a wealth of information on research studies, including search strategies, descriptions of data collection and analyses, results found, discussions and conclusions.

Research Connections is a partnership among several research organizations which provide a searchable database for finding articles, papers, data sets, instruments and other research related to childcare and early education. Citations are available for all research but some papers are not available for free due to copyright restrictions.

Cochrane Collaboration is similar to Campbell Collaboration but offers systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy.
This web site offers free access to summaries of the systematic reviews but there is a charge for the full text version of these reviews.

An extensive list of free evidence-based resources and databases available from the Community Toolbox web site.

Free version of ERIC, the education database from the Institute of Education Sciences

An index of tests and measures on a wide range of topics. Information on accessing measure is available for most of the tests.

Use the advanced Google Book search to find books related to a topic of interest for your research. Many books allow researchers to review the table of contents and several pages, if not complete chapters within books.

Provides a few data resources like OECD, World Bank, United Nations and U.S. Census. You can quickly compare countries and easily graph data.

GovTrack.us is a free tool which lets you track the activities of the U.S. Congress. You can track newly introduced bills, upcoming committee meetings, and all active legislature. It also links to the full text of bills on THOMAS.

MEL offers access to several databases with full-text articles to Michigan residents. A valid Michigan drivers license is required to log in.

Search the Michigan constitution, statutes, and all pending legislation. Bills and Public Acts are archived back to the 2001 legislative session.

All books published by the National Academies Press can be downloaded as PDFs for free. Browse by topics like aging, children, youth & families, policy, reviews and evaluations, population and fertility studies, women and minorities.

Follow current bills and laws in all 50 state legislatures. Find specific legislatures and see how they vote. Get information on committees and campaign contributions.

The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) is a civil rights law and policy organization based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to promote research-based advocacy strategies to address structural inequality and disrupt the systems that disadvantage low-income people of color. They seek to connect advocates with social scientists working at the intersection of race and poverty.

National Institute of Health (NIH) repository for peer-reviewed primary research reports in the life sciences. View the full text of articles online.

"Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is a world wide collaborative of over 800 leading scholars that is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research. It is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences."

Trip is a metasearch tool which searches multiple research databases at the same time, including Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews, Joanna Briggs Institute, guidelines from a number of U.S. and internationally based organizations, e-textbooks, manuals and more.

Congress.gov offers full-text searching for bills and resolutions from 1989 to the current Congress, bill summary and status from 1973 to present, and full-text committee reports from 1995 to present. Also provides links to other government resources and information on the legislative process.

Freely available international economic, environmental and social data provided by the World Bank.