Skip to Main Content

Political Economy of Social Welfare

How Journal Articles Can Be Helpful for Policy Research

  • Find out if researchers have done studies about effects of current policies on your topic?
  • Find out if researchers have done pilot projects on proposed policy changes?
  • Find theoretical articles about pros and cons or ethics of a proposed policy
  • Journal articles will not give you the most current information.  It can take over a year for journal articles to be published.  Search Google for reliable open access and news sources for more current information.  You will not always need to be concerned about finding information that is more recent that one year old; however, if you policy is currently being debated in congress, for example, you would not want to entirely rely on journal articles.

Databases for Journal Articles, Reports, Papers, Etc. on Policy Related Topics

The American Economic Association’s index to journals, books, papers and dissertations in every area related to economics from 1969 to present, with links to full-text.
 
Comprehensive journal index from the National Library of Medicine to over 4,600 biomedical journals.
 

Comprehensive sociological research database. Indexes, abstracts and some full text of journal articles, books and conference papers, 1895 - present.

ProQuest Social Sciences Premium Collection
A collection of databases in the social sciences, including Social Services Abstracts, PAIS, Sociological Abstracts, Intl. Bibliography of the Social Sciences and more, and full text coverage of journal articles. The contents can be searched individually or as a group.

Journal articles covering applied and theoretical aspects of the social sciences; full text from 1994 forward; indexing with abstracts from 1984 forward.

Social Services Abstracts

PAIS International and Archive
Public Affairs.  Covers public and social policy literature.

World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
Full text resource for thousands of World Bank publications including books (since 2009), World Development Reports (since 1978), working papers and journal articles.

World Development Indicators
World Bank's annual data on the world economy, with more than 800 indicators for 153 economies.

All of Hunter Library's subscription databases organized by subject

Hunter Library's subscription databases related to Public Health Policy and Management

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an open source search tool that spans across many disciplines and sources: it is often a very good resource for finding materials that may not appear in subscription library databases such as reports from professional societies, preprint repositories, universities, research institutes and think tanks, and other scholarly organizations.

Google & Google Scholar Tips & Tricks [pdf]

Search Journals One at a Time

Databases allow you to search many journals at once.  Here, you can search journals one by one.  This may be useful if you have already found out that a particular journal publishes a lot on your topic, or if you know there is a special issue on your topic.  You may access all these e-journals and more through the Hunter College Libraries website, and open the Journals tab