1. Write out your research statement and identify key CONCEPTS that represent your topic. For example:
"Services or programs for pregnant Hispanic teenagers"
Population Concept: teenagers
Population Characteristic Concept: Hispanic
Problem Concept: pregnant
Resolution Concept: services or programs
2. Assign relevant terms to each Concept box:
Box 1: teen* or adolescen*
Box 2: Hispanic or Latin* or "Mexican American"
Box 3: pregnan*
Box 4: programs or services or interven* or treat* or prevent*
3. Use of special characters:
The truncation symbol, *, searches for singular and plural versions of a word as well as variant spellings of a common root word. For example, Latin* will search for Latina, Latino, LatinX; pregnan* will search for pregnant, pregnancy
The use of quote marks surrounding a phrase (e.g. "Mexican American") searches for these word together.
The use of OR in a search box searches for ANY of those words.
The use of AND requires that the search find at least one word from each of the search boxes.
4. After you run your search use the limiting features in the left frame (e.g., journals, dates) to further refine your results.
The recommended EBSCO database, ACADEMIC SEARCH COMPLETE, is the largest and covers journals all subject areas.
Click the "Choose Databases" link at the top of the welcome screen for the Academic Search Complete database if you wish to add one or more additional EBSCO databases to your search.
Descriptions of the relevant EBSCO databases are listed below.
SOCIAL SERVICES ABSTRACTS is a smaller specialized database for Social Work and related areas so results will usually be less than from more broad based databases.
To the right of each search box, change the pull down menu from ANYWHERE to ANYWHERE EXCEPT FULL TEXT.
Click on the words FULL TEXT, HTML or PDF to read, print, email or download the entire article or non-article publication.
If the database does not display the words TEXT or PDF click on the 
icon.
A window opens which may provide one or more links to databases containing the online text of the article. For those articles that are only available in print or microform format, their location in the library will be listed.
If there are no links to the article ("no full text available") click SIGN IN, and follow the prompts to request a free online copy of the article through InterLibrary Loan.
