Much of the research in education gets published in the form of articles in research journals. These are often peer-reviewed prior to acceptance and publication by other sholars in the field. Journal articles typically present the results of one study, though some article (review articles) instead summarize other recent publications in the field.
This page discusses several major databases that focus on research in education, and includes the option of searching all three of these databases simultaneously. Each database is also discussed individually to describe their special features and differences.
All three of these major databases in education research can be searched simultaneously on the EBSCO platform. Enter one part of your topic above to get to the Advanced Search interface of the database and complete your search there.
If you want to search other EBSCO databases for related areas of scholarship, you can click 'Choose Databases' above the search box to add additional databases. For example, you may want to search databases related to psychology, history, or women's and gender studies at the same time if your education topic is more interdisciplinary.
Results from all of the databases will be shown together, with duplicated entries found in multiple databases removed. (Note: since these are removed as each page of results is generated, the total number of results may be lower than initially reported).
Subject and Subject Thesaurus filters at the side can help you brainstorm the difference Subject Headings that may be used in each database, or you can use the Thesaurus button near the top of your screen to explore subject headings.
The ERIC database is created by the US Department of Education and is designed to cover the scholarly literature of education.
Some of it's advantages include:
Though ERIC typically does not have the full text for journals, many of the 'ERIC Documents' (EDs), which are non-journal documents were scanned to microfilm and may be available. Look for 'Full Text from ERIC' as a link to these.
The ERIC database is available in many search environments. Each should have the same data, but there will be differences in how each one searches, uses the thesaurus, or connects to full text.
This link opens in a new windowEducation Research Complete is produced directly by EBSCO. Though it has fewer education journals indexed, it does have a large amount of Full Text available.
This link opens in a new windowEducation Full Text is published by the H. W. Wilson company. It indexes fewer publications (about 700), but every article longer than a single column is indexed, so shorter opinion or non-research oriented pieces may be found. Also, it includes important non-peer-reviewed sources, such as the Chronicle of Higher Education and similar publications, that may not be included in purely 'scholarly' indexes like ERIC. There is a lot of full text included as well.
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