What you need to do...
This page will cover researching the social validity of training (also called training acceptability).
Choose your database
This is a more difficult topic, which isn't at all cut and dry. You'll find you likely need to try more than one database. In fact, you may find that OneSearch is useful because of the way in which you can search such a huge number of records, across a wide variety of disciplines, all at the same time.
- ERIC (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
ERIC EBSCOhost is a key database in the field of education, providing access to bibliographic records of journal and non-journal literature. About one third of the content is accessible in full text from within the database.
- APA PsycInfo This link opens in a new window
Key database in the field of psychology. Includes information of use to psychologists, students, and professionals in related fields such as psychiatry, management, business, and education, social science, neuroscience, law, medicine, and social work.
- OneSearch This link opens in a new window
OneSearch is a tool that cross searches much of the content our databases and other online sources. You can search across many collections in one search box simplifying the resource discovery process.
Choose your search terms
For this example, we'll use OneSearch. But you're encouraged to use ERIC and PsycINFO as well.
The OneSearch Advanced Search option is the way to go, because we can use the different boxes to separate different aspects of our topic. From the Libraries' homepage, we can find the "Advanced Search" link below the main search box, as shown here:
We can CHOP up our topic, and DROP it into separate boxes, as shown here. (How to use CHOP, DROP, and OR.) This search allows us to specify that we want "social validity" to be searched as a phrase (tip: use quotes). The asterisk at the end of the root word acceptab* asks the database to search for all the words that start with that root. (In this case, it will search for acceptable and acceptability.)
We get many, many results. Remember that OneSearch enables you to search many of our databases at the same time, which accounts for the huge number.
To explore titles that look interesting, we'll click on the "Quick Look" link, which generally brings up the abstract (summary) of the article. Often there are also subject headings listed, which can sometimes help us think of different search terms we might use.
If we decide we want to focus our search, narrowing to discussion of the assessment aspect, we could click on "Advanced" in the upper bar, to return to the Advanced Search screen.
Here's what our search could look like if we choose to search on "social validity assessment" as a phrase with our other search terms.
There are more ways we can narrow our search, as well.
Place limits on your search
ONE way we could limit our search would be to add another term in another search box. Then the database will go through the records we've found and look for any that have our additional term in them.
Since we are interesting in training for staff (as opposed to parents), we may want to put staff OR employee in a new box.
ANOTHER way we could limit our search would be to look at the limiters on the left-hand side under "Refine Your Search." There are options to limit by date or by the "content type" (article, book, etc.).
Once you've chosen your article
Once you've chosen an article based on its record in the database you're searching, bring up the full text of the article by using the "Access now" or "Access options" buttons, or by looking for the "Find It @ Ball State" button, depending on the database.
For more information, check out the information at Find the Full Text of an Article and/or Interlibrary Loan.