LibGuides: Education Research &amp; Methods 550: Methods of Educational Inquiry: Articles

Recommended Article Databases

The following databases are a great place to start for general education research topics. Depending on your research topic, you may want to consider additional databases such as Human Resources Abstracts, Business Source Ultimate (both are useful for HRD topics); PsycInfo for topics related to behavior and attitudes; and SocIndex for topics related to social policy, social justice, and social welfare issues. Additional databases can be found in the A-Z Databases list linked below.

Education Full Text This link opens in a new window
Education Full Text indexes and abstracts articles from English-language journals and yearbooks published in the U.S. and elsewhere. English-language books relating to education published in 1995 or later are also indexed. Abstracting coverage begins with January 1994. Abstracts describe the content and scope of the source documents. Full-text coverage begins in January 1996.
Alternate Access Link
ERIC - EBSCO This link opens in a new window
ERIC is a national education database sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Presently the largest education database in the world, ERIC contains over 1,600,000 citations covering research documents, journal articles, technical reports, program descriptions and evaluations, and curricular materials in the field of education. In addition to ERIC subject descriptors and extensive abstracts, limited full-text access to selected items is available. Covers 1966-present.
Alternate Access Link
EBSCO Professional Development Collection This link opens in a new window
This EBSCO database draws from over 500 education journals, of which more than 350 are peer-reviewed. Includes extensive full-text links.
Alternate Access Link
Web of Science (Core Collection) This link opens in a new window
This database is primarily designed for citation searching rather than subject searching. However, citation searching can be very helpful when trying to locate and define a specific body of research

A-Z Databases
Find the best library databases for your research.

Finding Articles

Scholarly journal articles are one of the primary means of communicating research ideas. They are an important component of academic research and give you some insight into ongoing debates and scholarly conversations about your topic. You can find articles through database searches.

Finding articles is a two-step process:

First, search for the topic you are interested in by using the article databases listed on the left.
- Try words to describe the group of individuals you are researching: Asian Americans, Latino Americans, LGBTQ, Christians, Teenage mothers, Upper class, etc.
- Try words to describe your research area: stereotypes, oppression, historical landscape.
- Consider searching for these concepts together. For example, “Asian Americans” and “ stereotypes” = some great articles and books.
- Use the thesaurus to find additional or similar terms.
- Find an article that looks interesting? Look at the article’s citation for subject terms used in that database and run additional searches using these subjects.

Next, find the actual text of the articles you want by clicking on the PDF, HTML, or Discover button in a database.
- If the Discover link leads you to the library catalog and indicates that we have online full text, click the link to get to the article. In some cases, we may have the full text article available in multiple sources so be sure to check the dates to be sure they match the publication date of the article. If the library catalog page says there is no online full-text available, request full-text access through Interlibrary Loan.

Journal and Article Locator
If you know the citation of the articles you want, from bibliographies or suggested readings lists, you can use the Journal Article Locator to determine if we have full-text online or in print. TIP: Search for the journal title and also the title of the article for more precise results.