This research guide is intended as an overview of library resources and services of particular relevance for students in Professor Kathleen O'Connell's course HBSS 5040, Research Methods in Health and Behavior Studies. The resources, primarily electronic and accessible on and off campus, have been selected as ones supporting the objective of the course, i.e., to prepare students to "retrieve research publications, read, understand, and describe research; describe the advantages and disadvantages of various research designs and statistical approaches; and develop research-related skills for further graduate education." The guide also includes a section describing research consultation and assistance services and options for document retrieval and delivery available to all members of the Teachers College community.

Online Catalogs

EDUCAT - The most definitive record of the holdings of the Gottesman Libraries at Teachers College, including books, e-books, journals, e-journals, dissertations, media, and other specialized collections of all kinds.

CLIO Catalog - A union catalog of Columbia University Libraries (exclusive of the libraries of Teachers College, the Columbia Law School, and Jewish Theological Seminary), providing the most definitive record of individual libraries' holdings of books, e-books, journals, e-journals, dissertations, media, and other specialized collections of all kinds.

WorldCat - A union catalog of the contents of over 10,000 libraries worldwide, providing the means to do exhaustive searching by author, title, subject, and numerous other criteria and to find locations for specific items in libraries nearby and elsewhere.  WorldCat is also freely accessible on the Web at worldcat.org.

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are the official subject terms prescribed by the Library of Congress for the cataloging of books and are in use in essentially all academic libraries. To find works pertaining to research methods in health and behavior studies and related subjects, it may be useful to use some of the subject terms, or combinations of terms, listed below when searching the online catalogs of libraries at Teachers College, Columbia University, and other institutions.

• Clinical health psychology [R726.7]
• Diet [RA784 (Personal health)], [TX360-TX360.5 (Special countries)]
• Dietetics [RM214-RM218 (Therapeutics)]
• Eating disorders [RC552.E18]
• Exercise [GV460-GV548 (Physical education)], [QP301-QP336 (Physiology)],[RA781-RA781.85 (Personal health)]
• Exercise -- Physiological aspects [QP301-QP310]
• Exercise -- Psychological aspects
• Food [GN407-GN411.5 (Ethnology)], [RA601-RA602 (Public health)], [TX341-TX641 (Home economics)]
• Food habits [GT2850-GT2960 (Manners and customs)]
• Health [RA773-RA790]
• Health attitudes
• Health behavior[RA776.9]
• Health education [RA440-RA440.55]
• Health promotion [RA427.8]
• Information retrieval
• Medicine and psychology [R726.5-R726.8]
• Nursing [RT]
• Nursing -- Research [RT81.5]
• Nursing -- Research -- Methodology
• Nutrition [QP141-QP185.3 (Physiology)], [RA784 (Personal health)], [TX341-TX641 (Home economics)]
• Nutritionists
• Psychology, Applied [BF636-BF637]
• Research -- Methodology

For an overview of the call number system used in our library and many other academic libraries, see the Library of Congress Classification Outline page.

Periodical Indexes

Health and Biomedical Databases

Biological Abstracts (CU) - An index with abstracts to periodicals in biology and the life sciences. Provides access to biological and medical research findings, clinical studies, and discoveries of new organisms. Coverage is international, and includes biochemistry, biomedicine, biotechnology, genetics, microbiology, and pharmacology.

BioMed Central (CU) - Provides access to 207 open access biological and biomedical research journals, as well as current reports and meeting abstracts. BioMed Central offers information about current controlled trials, as well as topics in modern biology.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text - The online version of the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, providing full text for more than 750 journals indexed in CINAHL from 1981-present.

Cochrane Library (CU) - A collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making: the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews; the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials; the Cochrane Methodology Register; the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects; the Health Technology Assessment Database; and the NHS Economic Evaluation Database. There is a a seventh database that provides information about groups in The Cochrane Collaboration.

EMBASE (CU) - This database describes itself as "a highly versatile, multipurpose and up-to-date biomedical research database. It covers the most important international biomedical literature from 1947 to the present day and all articles are indexed in depth using Elsevier's Life Science thesaurus Embase Indexing and Emtree."

MEDLINE - MEDLINE covers the international literature on biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, humanities, and information science as they relate to medicine and health care. Information is indexed from approximately 3,900 journals published world-wide. Our library makes the database available via the Ebsco platform; ISI Web of Knowledge Medline (CU) and Ovid MEDLINE (CU) are also available via Columbia.

PubMed (CU) - "Provides access to over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. Includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources."

Behavior Studies Databases

APA PsycNET - Single search interface for PsycARTICLES, PsycBOOKS, and PsycEXTRA (see E-Collections below).

PsycINFO (CU) - Covers the scholarly literature in the psychological, social, behavioral, and health sciences.

Social Sciences Full Text - Provides coverage of English-language journals across social science disciplines, with indexing from 1983, abstracting from 1984, and select access to full text from 1984 to the present.

Education Databases

ERIC - Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education to provide extensive access to education-related periodical literature, ERIC (which stands for Educational Resources Information Center) provides coverage of conferences, meetings, government documents, theses, dissertations, reports, audiovisual media, bibliographies, directories, books, and monographs. In addition to this version, made available via the ProQuest platform, ERIC is also accessible via the U.S. government ERIC site and through Ebsco ERIC.

Education Full Text - Provides comprehensive coverage of an international range of English-language periodicals, monographs, and yearbooks. Indexing coverage begins June 1983; abstracts are included beginning spring 1994; full text of some journals is available beginning in January 1996.

Education Index Retrospective - Provides cover-to-cover indexing for an international range of English-language periodicals and yearbooks; coverage from 1929 through mid-1983.

Education Research Complete - Provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals, as well as full text for more than 1,200 journals, and includes full text for nearly 500 books and monographs.

Professional Development Collection - Designed for professional educators, this database provides a highly specialized collection of nearly 520 high-quality education journals, including more than 350 peer-reviewed titles. The database also contains more than 200 educational reports.

Multidisciplinary Databases

Academic Search Premier - A multidisciplinary database providing full text for more than 4,600 journals, including nearly 3,900 peer-reviewed titles. PDF backfiles to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals. See also Academic Search Complete (CU), a scholarly, multidisciplinary full-text database, with more than 8,500 full-text periodicals, including more than 7,300 peer-reviewed journals. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1887.

EBSCOhost Research Databases (CU) - Provides access to numerous databases across disciplines, indexing journals and other scholarly publications; full text provided in many instances.

JSTOR (CU) - An online archive of over 1,200 leading scholarly journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Journals are always included from volume 1, issue 1 and include previous and related titles.

ProQuest (CU) - Provides broad multidisciplinary coverage of scholarly journals, newspapers, dissertations, and other types of publications; for international coverage and access to full texts of dissertations only, search ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, a subset of ProQuest.

Federated Search Engines

Super Search (via Gottesman Libraries) - To search some or all of our periodical indexes, plus EDUCAT and CLIO, simultaneously for books, journal articles, reports, dissertations, etc.

Quicksearch (via Columbia University Libraries) - To search the catalog, multiple periodical indexes, and other web resources simultaneously within a variety of subjects and disciplinary subcategories.

Google Scholar - Provides the means to search for scholarly research across many disciplines and sources:  articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other web sites.

Encyclopedias and Dictionaries

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Education (2nd Edition) - The 2003 version of the classic resource in education and related fields.

Encyclopedia of Food and Culture - A survey of food and its place in human culture and society, presented through 600 alphabetically sorted entries; features multidisciplinary coverage of such topics as comfort food, ethnicity and food, medieval banquets, and nutrient composition, among many others.

Encyclopedia of Health and Behavior - Includes more than 200 entries on topics such as physical activity, stress and health, smoking, pain management, social support and health, cardiovascular health, health promotion, and HIV/AIDS.

Encyclopedia of Nursing Research (2nd Edition) - Published in 2006, this resource comprises 320 articles by 200 expert contributors and include topics such as nursing services, electronic networks and technology, nursing education, nursing care, specialties in nursing, patients' reactions and adjustments, historical, philosophical, and cultural issues, and nursing organizations and publications.

Encyclopedia of Public Health - Examines a broad range of topics such as environmental health, drug abuse, epidemiology, nutrition, demographics, and diseases. Includes overviews, definitions, and biographical entries.

Gale Encyclopedia of Nursing and Allied Health (2nd Edition) (CU) - Provides more than 850 entries covering topics in nursing and allied health, including body systems and functions, conditions and common diseases, issues and theories, techniques and practices, and devices and equipment.

Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology (2nd Edition) - In more than 650 entries covers the entire spectrum of psychology, including notable people, theories and terms; landmark case studies and experiments; applications of psychology in advertising, medicine and sports; and career information.

International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (CU) - This key reference work comprises 4,000 articles, commissioned by 52 Section Editors, and includes 90,000 bibliographic references as well as comprehensive name and subject indexes.

Dictionaries

Merriam-Webster Unabridged (CU) - Searchable database offers access to the full range of Merriam-Webster products in their unabridged form. Also includes access to a blog, word games, lists, word of the day,

OED Online (CU) - The electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is "the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium . . . an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past . . . traces the usage of words through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of international English language sources, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts and cookery books" (publisher's description).

Reviews of Research

Annual Reviews - Reviews of topics in biomedical, physical, and social sciences published as annual journals; see series for Medicine, Nutrition, Physiology, Public Health, and other subjects.

Review of Educational Research - A publication of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the RER publishes quarterly critical, integrative reviews of research literature bearing on education, including conceptualizations, interpretations, and syntheses of scholarly work.

Review of Research in Education - A publication of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the RRE provides an annual overview and descriptive analysis of selected topics of relevant research literature through critical and synthesizing essays.

E-Collections

Ebook Central - Online books across a range of subject areas; searchable, under Browse Subjects, by Education, Health and Medicine, Social Science, Science and Technology, etc. and other topics.

Health Reference Center Academic (CU) - Multi-source database providing access to full-text of nursing and allied health journals, plus a wide variety of personal health information sources that offer reliable health information to researchers, including nursing and allied health students.

JSTOR (CU) - An online archive of over 1,200 leading scholarly journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Journals are always included from volume 1, issue 1 and include previous and related titles. The most recently published issues (the past 3-5 years) are frequently not available through JSTOR, though they usually are through other e-sources.

PsycARTICLES - A full-text database of journals published by the American Psychological Association and other publishers in subject areas such as applied psychology, health, theory, research, social/personality, and more.

PsycBOOKS - A full text database of books published by the American Psychological Association, classic books, and entries from the Encyclopedia of Psychology.

PsycEXTRA - A gray literature database comprised of material written for professionals and disseminated outside of peer-reviewed journals; documents include newsletters, magazines, newspapers, technical and annual reports, government reports, consumer brochures, and more.

SAGE Knowledge (CU) - "A database of ebooks and reference books published by SAGE covering the social sciences and education, including such areas as African American Studies, Aged & Gerontology, Anthropology, Communication and Media Studies, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Economics, Education, Gender & Sexuality Studies, History, Politics, Psychology, Social Issues, Social Work & Social Policy, and Sociology."

Handbooks of Research

Handbook of Clinical Nursing Research (CU) - This 1999 publication collections 35 chapters by numerous authors divided in the follow sections: Part I, Philosophical, Theoretical, and Methodological Perspectives and Issues; Part IIA, Critical Health Needs of Communities and Vulnerable Populations: Clinical Nursing Research for Vulnerable Populations; Part IIB, Clinical Nursing Practice Strategies and Nurse Sensitive Outcomes; Part IIC, Families in Health, Illness, and Life Transitions; Part IID, Health Promotion and Risk Reduction ; Part IIE, Biobehavioral Manifestations of Health and Illness; Part IIF, Women's Health; Part IIG, Older Adults: Health and Illness Issues; and Part IIH, Environments for Optimizing Client Outcomes.

Handbook of Health Behavior Research III: Demography, Development, and Diversity (CU) - This 1997 publication is made up of 16 chapters by experts in the field, divided into the the following sections: Overview; Health Behavior and the Human Life Span; Health Behavior in Populations “At Risk”; Health Behavior in Structured Communities; and Integration (Demography, Development, and Diversity of Health Behavior).

Handbook of Health Behavior IV: Relevance for Professionals and Issues for the Future Relevance for Professionals and Issues for the Future (CU) - Published in 1997, this research compendium comprises 20 chapters, by various experts in the field, divided into four sections: Professional Training and Practice; Health Management and Health Policy; Planned Applications; and Toward the Future.

Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology (CU) - This work, published in 2011 and made up of 36 chapters, "compiles the most relevant scholarship from psychology, medicine, and public health to offer a thorough and authoritative model of the biopsychosocial approach to health. Articles address all relevant concepts in this model, including its applications to health promotion, health behavior change, and treatment."

Citation Indexes

Google Scholar - Provides the means to search by author or publication title, and indicates and provides links to works that have cited the documents retrieved.

Scopus (CU) - Abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources with smart tools to track, analyze, and visualize research.

Web of Science - Comprising the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Science Citation Index Expanded, this database supports searching by topic, author, or publication name, and is also a major means for doing cited reference searching, to find articles that cite a person's work.

Tests and Measurements

Health and Psychosocial Instruments (HAPI) (CU) - Information on approximately 15,000 measurement instruments (i.e. questionnaires, interview schedules, checklists, coding schemes, rating scales, etc.) in the fields of health and psychosocial sciences.

Mental Measurements Yearbook with Tests in Print- Produced by the Buros Institute, this database contains extensive information about and reviews of English-language, commercially available, standardized tests covering educational skills, personality, vocational aptitude, psychology, and related areas, as included in the printed Mental Measurements Yearbooks. Includes full-text reviews of more than 3,000 contemporary testing instruments.

Digital Archives

Academic Commons - Columbia University's online repository, where current faculty, students, and staff can deposit the results of their scholarly work and research.

Internet Archive - A non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies, and music, as well as 150 billion archived web pages.

PocketKnowledge - The social archive of Teachers College, including unpublished manuscripts and archives from the library's collections, documents from other departments and administrative offices College-wide, and the work of TC students, faculty, and researchers.

Statistical Resources

MedlinePlus Health Statistics - Provides helpful links to various types of health and vital statistics for consumers and health professionals. Contents include Overviews; Latest News; Specific Conditions; Related Issues; Research; Journal Articles; Directories; Organizations; Newsletters/Print Publications; Law and Policy; Children; Teenagers; Men; Women; and Seniors.

National Center for Health Statistics - A product of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this database provides U.S. public health statistics, covering diseases, pregnancies, births, aging, and mortality. Public use data files are available for download. Includes important statistical subsets and reports, including NCHS Data Briefs; NCHS Health E-Stats; Health, United States; and many others.

World Health Organization Data and Statistics - Comprised of several key databases, including the Global Health Observatory, Global Health Estimates, and Statistics from WHO Regional Offices; also data by categories, including mortality and health status, diseases, coverage of services, risk factors, and health systems.

Bibliography and Citation Management Programs

Citation Management Software - An extensive description of and guide to the use of  Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote, courtesy of Columbia University Libraries.

Library Services

Ask a Librarian - To explore a variety of kinds of research support: submit an email reference query to librarians onsite; request a research consultation with a Gottesman librarian; review frequently asked questions via the library's Knowledge Database.

Course Reserves - Provides online access to digital course readings, including e-journal articles and book chapters, as well as call numbers for physical course reserves materials (books, DVDs, videos, etc.).

Requesting New Materials - The means to recommend items for purchase and/or to request from other libraries materials (dissertations, book chapters, journal articles, etc.) not available through the Gottesman or Columbia University Libraries.