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PBHL3190: Disability and Public Health: Finding Articles

Using Databases to Find Research Articles

When conducting academic research, you should try to find as much information about previous research on your topic, as possible. 

One of the best places to look for articles is on the Library’s Databases tab.  Databases range from general to subject-specific, can be used from off campus, and many offer full-text access to articles.

If your topic covers more than one subject (Social Sciences and Education, etc.) you'll want to search more than one database to get the full picture.

Visit our main Databases page, for a full list of resources available to you!

Public Health Databases

There are a number of useful databases for finding scholarly/peer reviewed articles (see tutorial on the side).  This type of resource is not always easy to find when searching Google or even Google Scholar, so it's best to begin with the following databases:

Scholarly v. Popular

When conducting research, you will usually be asked to find Scholarly Articles, or artices from a Scholarly Journal, rather than popular sources (like magazines and newspapers).

Not sure what the difference is between scholarly and popular?  Check out this short tutorial: Scholarly v. Popular

Is It Scholarly?

How can you tell if you've found a scholarly article?

Some of our databases allow you to limit your results to Scholarly or Peer-Reviewed (possibly Refereed) articles.  In some cases, this isn’t so clear.  You can either check with your professor or a librarian, or you can search for the journal name in Ulrichsweb (from on campus).