Planning your search
Be clear about the question you want answered. Are you looking for background contextual information? Are you looking for evaluation studies that can demonstrate the likely outcomes of a particular service or intervention? Are you looking for statistical information? Most important of all are you sure that it is a question that is likely to be answered by a search of research literature?
Think about the limits of your search. Do you need to move beyond our website? Which publication years are to be covered? Will it only be UK-based research?
Decide how you will conduct your search. This is a decision based upon the time and the resources you have available. Your search may involve using a local library, a University library, resources held in your own agency, the Internet or subscription-based databases to which your agency has access. You could also contact specialist libraries, such as the NCB Inform and NSPCC Inform.
Decide if you need specialist help to conduct a search and see if there is a friendly librarian or research officer that can help you. Do note that a comprehensive search can be both time-consuming and require the specific skills of a librarian or someone trained in information retrieval. Be realistic about the scope of the search you want to conduct (you may decide, for example, to focus solely on databases that have a specialist focus on social care research, such as Social Care Online and Child Data).
