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International Social Work (EN): 1. Orient and specify

Libguide for students of the course International Social Work.

Orient and specify

In social work, making use of evidence-based practice is essential to ensure that interventions and decisions are grounded in reliable research and proven outcomes. It is therefore important that we know how to search for information. This information can come from various sources, depending on the type of information that you're looking for.

In this step you will learn how the information on the internet is structured, what types of information are available and where you can look for information. 

Structure of the internet

The internet can be viewed as an ocean of information. On the surface there are websites that can be found through search engines such as google and google scholar, as well as by Artificial Intelligence. Many titles and summaries of articles can also be found in this publicly accessible part of the internet.

Further down is the deep web, in which you can find information in databases and scientific articles. It is often required to log in with an account such as your HAN account to access this information.

Even further down is the Dark web, which is mainly used for illegal activities. It is therefore omitted in this image. 

How to orientate

Orientation is primarily about expanding your own knowledge and seeing how much information is available on your topic. The goal is not to immediately find reliable sources. You can orient yourself in a couple of ways:

  • Using a search engine such as Google: The quickest way to publicly available information. They often use an algorithm that tries to predict what sources you might be interested in and shows these first. The downside to this is that the way in which sources are found is not transparent, meaning you might miss out on certain information that might be useful to you.
  • Typing a few words in HAN Quest or Google Scholar and browsing titles and abstracts
  • Explore news articles using Nexis Uni
  • Browsing the websites of important organisations in your particular field of interest.

Information sources

Type of information Source
Personal experiences, opinions and personal communication Internship, field experts, colleagues, blogs
Study books, e-books and physical books Han Catalogue, HANQuest
Research reports, reports of organisations Google, Google Scholar
Scientific articles, academic journals Library databases HANQuest, Google Scholar, 
News articles NexisUni (database)
Websites of professional organisations Google

 

Formulate a search query

The information gathered in the oriëntation phase helps in formulating a search query. This prevents aimless browsing and helps you identify the most relevant sources. The aim is to answer the search query using reliable sources. The question should meet a few criteria:

  • It is an open ended question (cannot be answered by simply yes or no)
  • It includes at least a topic, process and target group
  • The question is unbiased: it does not favor a particular outcome but is neutral in its formulation

The question makes it easier to create a search string to type into the search bar. We will further focus on this in the next step.