Psycinfo
Journal articles (covers more than 1,700 periodicals), chapters, books, dissertations and reports on psychology and related fields.
- PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Finding Articles on Program Evaluation
To find articles on program evaluation for your program, begin with a keyword related to your topic, and then add the word "program evaluation" to your search.
In this example, I've used "reading and program evaluation" to find program evaluations for reading programs.
After searching for a keyword relevant to your topic such as reading and program evaluation, Psycinfo will suggest subjects that will be useful to you, such as "educational program evaluation."
You can select any of the subjects to add these to your search terms. This will be helpful if your program is in an educational setting rather than social services or healthcare as how they will evaluate programs will differ.
Exclude Dissertations
Dissertation Abstracts
When searching Psycinfo, you'll often find what look to be great articles, and then you'll request them through Interlibrary Loan, only to find out that what you ordered was a 1 or 2 page abstract or is not availalbe. This is usually because the citation is for a dissertation abstract. You can easily tell if what you're looking at is a dissertation abstract by looking at the citation.
Find Journal Articles - Specialized Databases
- ERIC This link opens in a new windowPremier index of Education resources, including abstracts of articles from over 1000 journals and of documents such as teaching guides, research reports, lesson plans, and test and evaluation instruments.
Covers: 1966 - present - SocINDEX with Full Text This link opens in a new windowFull text for over 500 journals in sociology and related disciplines, and indexing for over 3000 others. Also includes relevant books and conference papers, many of them full-text, and allows searching of cited references.
Covers: 1895 - present (varies by title) - PsycARTICLES This link opens in a new windowFull-text for 59 core scholarly and scientific journals. Covers topics of general psychology and specialized, applied, clinical and theoretical research.
Covers: 1894 - present - ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowA collection of journals and other publications covering life sciences, health sciences, physical sciences and engineering as well as social sciences, humanities and business. (use buttons at top of page to go to journals or do a search)
- ABI/INFORM Global This link opens in a new windowSearch over 2,000 premier worldwide business periodicals for information on advertising, marketing, economics, human resources, finance, taxation, computers, and more. Also includes information on 60,000+ companies and the full text of thousands of dissertations.
Covers: 1971 - 1984 (citations only); 1985 - present (citations & full text) - ERIC Documents/Index This link opens in a new windowFree access to ERIC index of journal and non-journal education literature.
Covers: 1966 - 1992 (citations only); 1993 - present (citations & full text for most non-journal documents)
Major Journals on Program Assessment and Evaluation
Below are links to two major journals that focus specifically on program planning and evaluation. You can use the links to search directly in those journals in addition to searching the major databases such as Psycinfo and Science Direct. Just select the name of the database (i.e. Science Direct) to search directly within that journal.