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Social Work

Find quality information

Not sure how to get started with your research? Check out our Research Process Guide to learn how to plan and begin searching for information to answer your assignment question.

These are good places to begin looking for academic information on your assignment topic:

Universal search

Come into the Ōtara Campus Library and browse the shelves:

150 Psychology
155 Lifespan development
301 Sociology
305.231 Child development
305.899442
Te ao Māori
361.3 Social Work
990 Pacific History
993 New Zealand History

New Zealand book collections on the internet

Databases

Find academic articles, written by researchers in Social Work or associated fields.

Databases for newspaper articles

Research from New Zealand tertiary institutes

Academic Journals

Social work and community journals

New Zealand journals

International journals

Bibliographies

The three bibliographies below are lists of articles relating to Māori and Pasifika research. Look through them to find relevant articles for your topic. Search for the title using Search Rapua or Google Scholar. If you can't access an article, we can try to get it from another library. Look at our interlibrary loan page for more information.

Websites

New Zealand Government

Governments produce large amounts of information. Think about which government department might be working in the area you are researching.

Tip: you can choose to just display webpages from New Zealand government websites on Google by adding site:.govt.nz to your search. For instance: maori homelessness site:.govt.nz 

Here are some government websites to start you off: 

Independent research 

Community organisations

Also think about which organisations are working in the area you are researching. Many produce reports and statistics. Often these are found under "resources" on their websites.

Professional Associations

Searching library databases

Search using keywords (the main ideas) and use advanced search to join your keywords together using AND, OR, NOT.

Put phrases in speech marks eg. "social work" "human development"

Use * to search for variations of words eg. develop* will search for develop, develops, developed, developing, development, developments etc

Use a useful book or article to find further information

Go back in time:

If you find a book or article that is useful for your research, have a look at the reference list and see if there are any sources there that could also be relevant. Search for the title on Search Rapua. 

Go forwards in time:

If you find a book or article that is useful for your research, try searching for the title on Google Scholar and using the "cited by" button to find other authors, who have used it in their own research.

Can't access a relevant book or article?

If we don't have access to a book or article that you think would be relevant to your research, we can try and get it from another library. See our interlibrary loan page for more information and a form you can fill out. Or email Antonia: antonia.rust@manukau.ac.nz