Contents & Search Tips
Social Services Abstracts

Indexing and abstracting of journal articles and dissertations, with citations to book reviews. Subject coverage of community and mental health services; crisis intervention; the family and social welfare; gerontology; poverty and homelessness; professional issues in social work; social and health policy; social services in addiction; social work education; social work practice; support groups and networks; violence, abuse, and neglect; and welfare services. Coverage from 1980 to the present, with monthly updates.

 TRUNCATION AND WILDCARDS

 
*

Use at the end of a search term to truncate, or within a term as a multicharacter wildcard, eg. femini* will retrieve articles using feminist, feminism, feminine, etc.

 

 

?

Use ? as a single wildcard within a search term, eg. wom?n will retrieve articles using both woman and women.

 
BOOLEAN OPERATORS

Boolean operators can be used in either Basic or Command Line search screens.

 

 

AND

where both terms are present
 

OR

where either term is present
 

NOT

excludes the second term
 

WITHIN/X

finds one search term within a certain number of words of a second search term
 
NEAR
finds one search term within ten words of a second search term
 
BEFORE
finds a first search term when it appears before a second search term (the two terms are not necessarily next to each other)

AFTER

finds a first search term appearing after a second search term (the two terms are not necessarily next to each other)

LIMITS
Social Services Abstracts allows you to limit your searches in both Basic and Advanced Search screens.
 

Date

The default will search all records. Use the drop down menus to limit to a range of years.
 

Latest update

Click the radio button to limit your search to documents added to the database within the last week.
 Journal articles Click this button to limit your search to journal articles only.
 

English

Click this button to limit your search to documents in English.
SPECIAL FEATURES
 ThesaurusA searchable thesaurus allows for alphabetical search of descriptors, and displays related terms. Click on Thesaurus to begin your search.
 BrowseAuthor, journal and publication type indexes are all browseable. Click on Browse Indexes and select the appropriate index before searching.
 Search alerts Set up a Search Alert and the database will automatically conduct your search every week and email new results to your email account.
 RefWorksSocial Services Abstracts is compatible with RefWorks. You can export your search results directly to a RefWorks file.