International Social Work (EN): 2. Plan and search

For a more detailed search there are a couple of search engines or databases we can recommend:

HANQuest: For scientific sources such as books or articles. Use the advanced search option for a more comprehensive search.

Google Scholar: For scientific and semi-scientific sources. A title and an abstract are often available, a subscription may be needed for further access. Keep in mind that since Google Scholar searches the internet for scientific articles it may occasionally also show unreliable or AI-generated content.

NexisUni: Searches newspaper articles. Keep in mind that these articles are written by journalists instead of actual experts on a topic. Always be critical when using these sources.

APA Psycinfo: A database with peer-reviewed scientific articles in the field of psychology, social sciences, coaching and related subjects. Although HANQuest also searches this database, searching directly in Psycinfo allows a more detailed search by using the thesaurus.

CBS statistics Netherlands: A public source with statistical information from the Netherlands. Keep in mind that this website shows mostly quantitative data.

You can connect different search terms with each other by placing the words AND, OR and NOT in between them. There are also tricks for combining several words as one term and for searching several variants of a word:

AND: You find sources containing the term in front and the term behind the operator

OR: You find sources containing either the term in front or the term behind the operator, as well as sources containing both

NOT: You find sources containing the term in front of the operator but exclude sources with the term behind the operator.

(brackets): Can be used to connect multiple operators by indicating which operators should be used first. Two examples can be found below.

Masking: Place a questionmark in the middle of a word that works as a wildcard for any one letter. Useful for finding American and British variants of a word such as analyze and analyse. These words can both be found with analy?e.

Truncation: Place an asterisk* at the end of a word that works as a wildcard for zero, one or multiple letters. Useful for finding a singular and a plural of a word, or different conjugations of a word. For example; parent* searches for parent, parents, and parenting.

There are several tools available to help you look for search terms. For every method it is important to verify whether the term fits your element.

• Websites from the Orientation step: Websites often mention a couple of different terms that are used to describe a topic.
• Thesaurus.com: a website that finds several synonyms and related terms for each word you enter
• Artificial Intelligence (AI): several language models are available that can give you a list of related terms and synonyms, such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Mistral AI. You can for example ask: 'give me 10 synonyms or related term for ...'. Critically look at which terms you might be able to use since AI tends to hallucinate when it can't properly fulfill a request.

There are also several methods for translating terms from another language to English:

• DeepL: a translator in which you can enter search terms
• Wikipedia: an online encyclopedia. While not a direct translator, it is possible to find a wikipedia article in another language and then select another language. Use the language button in the top right corner and select 'English'.

The building block method is the most comprehensive way of searching for literature. This method works as follows:

• Determine which aspects from your search question are most important to find in the literature. Often these include a target group, a topic, process and target group. 
• Look for different synonyms or related terms for each of these elements. You can make use of one or several of the brainstorm tools below. You can structure your search with a search scheme.
• Place the operator OR between the terms for one of the elements and place brackets around the terms. Repeat this for the other elements as well.
• Place all the different elements in the query box and connect these with the AND operator. If you use HAN Quest you can also place the different elements in separate search bars that are connected with the AND operator.
• Click Search!

Below is an example of an empty search scheme with three elements.

These elements can be combined in a search string that looks like:

(... OR ... OR ...) AND (... OR ... OR ...) AND (... OR ... OR ...) 

For more information about combining search terms see "building block methods". This search combines the elements "young adults", "autism" and "independence".

When you have found one or several useful sources you can use the following two methods to find additional sources about related topics:

Citation search: You check which articles have cited the article that you already found. To use this method, enter the title of your current article in google scholar, and click below the article on "cited by". This results in articles that are more recently published than your original article.

Snowball method: The snowball method relies on the references that are used in the article that you already found. Look through the reference list and check whether there are articles that might also be interesting for your search. This results in articles that are less recently published than your original article.

In Google Scholar you can also use the button "related articles" to find articles that use similar words. Keep in mind that this method relies on Google's algorithm and is not transparent.

Microsoft. (2024). Copilot. [AI assistent]. Retrieved at 8 february 2024, from copilot.microsoft.com