The library can help you with the first major part of your Interview Project:

Step 1: Identify a topic/population/problem of interest

Step 2: Locate and read 2 scholarly articles on selected topic or evidence based practice

Step 3: Create 5-8 interview questions based on the scholarly articles

Step 3 might be the hardest, because you have to understand your scholarly articles enough to formulate questions from them! This might look like:

• Have you found ___ to be true in your work? (___ study found ___)
• If you have worked in other states/counties, have you noticed differences in the ___ compared to here?
• I read an article that mentioned ___ but I wasn't sure what that meant. Could you clarify?

Scholarly articles should never claim to have a final answer. In fact, they will often conclude their papers with ideas for future research! The whole research process is about asking questions- again and again and again.

These tips are adapted from a library presentation and are just a sample of questions that could be brainstormed after reading an abstract. (Never just read an abstract!)

• Step One: Read article abstract (recommended databases above).
• Step Two: Write down questions you have. Any questions!
• Step Three: Read the article (Librarian Jamie starts with the Results/Discussion sections, then moves back through the whole paper more thoroughly.)
• Step Four: Revise questions.
• Step Five: Search for more research in the field and/or ask these questions during your interview!

Sample Questions

After reading the abstract of the article cited below, Librarian Jamie came up with the following questions- some could be answered by reading through the study, some could be answered by asking a social worker, some might not have an answer! This is just an example of brainstormed questions after reading an article of interest:

• How are the researchers defining "emotional support"?
• How was the original study conducted?
• What do they suggest as support for mothers in different demographic groups? (And why?)
• Have you noticed that mothers from all educational attainment levels experience new parent stress the same?
• Have you noticed a difference in parental stress levels of single mothers vs. mothers where the father or other partner is present?
• In your experience, have you seen a father's support backfire? Is there research on the "right" types of support?
• How are new parents supposed to discover this information?
• Are there policy changes that could help reduce or relieve new parent stress?

Sampson, M., Villarreal, Y., & Padilla, Y. (2015). Association between support and maternal stress at one year postpartum: Does type matter? Social Work Research, 39(1), 49–59. https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/svu031

SLCC Library access to the article "Association between support and maternal stress at one year postpartum: Does type matter?"

When asked to identify and examine a past or current social welfare policy, here are some tips:

1. Find a social welfare policy of interest (see link below for ideas)
2. Locate the policy itself (usually on a .gov website- you can try to search the internet for "program name law", i.e. TANF law, and find the official legislation information)
3. Search the policy name, or nickname, in library databases on this page (try OneSearch first)
4. Don't forget to research the costs of this policy, as well as the impact
5. Follow assignment instructions to include sources and create your own recommendations for policy improvement

Cite your sources in-text when you:

• Paraphrase a source
• Summarize a source
• Directly quote a source

Everything you cite in-text should be included in your References at the end of your paper; everything in your References list should be cited in text!

Not sure what to research? Here are a few ideas:

• Look at a professional association's website to see what topics are currently trending (or follow them on social media)
• Check out what researchers at other institutions are investigating in their Social Work departments
• Use your textbook- which chapters or sections are most interesting to you?
• Search for areas of interest in a reference source, like an encyclopedia (or textbook) to get more background information
• Start with a big idea (i.e. "social work") and search it in a search engine or a the Library's OneSearch or ProQuest Central database; scroll through the results and look for items or keywords that jump out to you (i.e. social work and healthcare; social work and teenagers; social work and hospice; social work and libraries). You can build this into a list of keywords and/or a concept map to visually represent connections between the ideas you find interesting.
• Look into other avenues for topic inspiration- maybe a podcast or newspaper editorial sparks your interest
• Look at the table of contents from a recent issue of a Social Work journal- which articles interest you? One of them could be a source of inspiration AND a source for your project!

The links below might help you get started with some of these ideas:

Different types of publications have different purposes and different audiences. When we talk about journals, we can usually divide these publications into three broad categories: scholarly, popular, and trade/professional publications.