The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) is a valuable source of information for teachers &endash; including research information. It is a federal, national information system comprised of sixteen clearinghouses throughout the country. The clearinghouses focus on the following topics:
The online addresses can be found in many ERIC publications, including those discussed in the following paragraphs. If you are using the online version of this book, you should be able to click on any of the names in the above list and go directly to the home page of that clearinghouse.
Each clearinghouse focuses on a specific area of educational interest, such as counseling or special education. One of the responsibilities of each ERIC clearinghouse is to collect documents that contain information relevant to its area of specialization. The specific clearinghouses vary widely in the unique services they offer, and the easiest way to find out what is available in your area of interest is to contact the clearinghouses that you think may provide information useful to your professional interests.
The ERIC Database
One of the most valuable components of the ERIC system is the ERIC Database, which is probably the world's largest source of information about education. The database contains more than one million abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice. It is possible to access the ERIC Database via the Internet or via commercial vendors and public networks. You can also access printed ERIC abstracts through Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE) and Resources in Education (RIE). The electronic database is updated monthly (quarterly on CD-ROM), ensuring that the information is current and accurate.
The best way to find information through ERIC is to do a computer search. When accessing information via computer, it may not even be obvious which specific clearinghouse or ERIC resource you are using. We shall describe a computerized information search later. The following paragraphs will first describe two of the major ERIC information resources.
{Note that specific knowledge of Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE) and of Resources in Education (RIE) is no longer necessary to use the electronic version of the ERIC database. It is reasonable to skip the discussion of these hardcopy materials. However, I would urge you to at least take a look at Figure 3.1 and its accompanying discussion before skipping to the discussion of computerized access to the ERIC database.}
The Current Index to Journals in Education (CIJE) is an ERIC publication that attempts to keep abreast of what is published in the many journals directly or indirectly related to education. CIJE is a published monthly, and a cumulative index is available at the end of each six-month period. It publishes complete citations and brief abstracts for as many as possible of the thousands of articles on educational topics that are published each year. By examining the abstract, we can find out what the article is about; and if we are interested enough to want to know more, the citation tells us the exact page numbers in a specific journal where we can read the entire article.
To use the hardcopy version of CIJE, we would start by referring to the index section. This might be the index of a monthly issue or the annual cumulative index. If we were starting our search with a specific topic in mind, we would begin by going to the subject index. To take a specific example, assume we are looking for information on family-centered techniques that focus on enablement. We might begin by looking at the most recent cumulative index and looking under the subject headings of either "Family-Centered Therapy" or "Enablement." In the January-June1994 CIJE Cumulative Index under the "Family-Centered Therapy" we would find 17 articles listed on page 672.
One of these is listed as follows:
- EJ 446 919
The reference to EJ 446 919 tells us to look in the main entry section, where that number appears in sequence. There we would find the entry shown in Figure 3.1. {Note that this same citation would more easily be found by using a computer search, which will be described later.}
Figure 3.1. An entry from the ERIC database, describing a journal article. This is typical of entries found in the printed version of Current Index to Journals in Education.
The first part of this entry tells us where to find the article, if we would want to pursue it further.The information in parentheses tells us that, in addition to being available in the Journal of Childhood Communication Disorders, this article is also available as a reprint from University Microfilms.
The list of descriptors tells us terms that substantively describe the article and under which the article is listed in the subject index of CIJE. This information about descriptors, which at first might seem superfluous, is often helpful. By entering these terms we would have been able to find this article. In addition, by knowing what descriptors apply to the article we are currently examining, we can find out where similar articles are also likely to be found. For example, in this case, we know that "Early intervention" and "Parenting Skills" are descriptors that apply to this article; and so we might want to look under those descriptors in the subject index (or use them in a computer search) to see if there are any other articles that might be of interest to us. All the descriptors listed after the citation are pertinent to the article in question, but the article was actually indexed in CIJE only under the descriptors marked by an asterisk. Therefore, we would have found this article indexed under Child Rearing, *Communication Disorders; *Early intervention; *Family Involvement; Individual Development; Objectives; Parenting Skills; Skill Development; *Teamwork; and Young Children.
Finally, the abstract describes the contents of the article. By reading this abstract we can decide whether we want to pursue the article any further. The initials in parentheses at the end of the abstract indicate who wrote the abstract. If the abstract had been written by the author, it would say so at this point. {In this case, the author wrote the abstract and one of ERIC's professional reviewers verified this with the initials JDD.}
Rather than merely plunging into CIJE to begin our search, we could be more systematic by referring first to the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors (Figure 3.2). By looking in this book we can find out what descriptors are actually used in CIJE. Moreover, we can find related terms, broader terms, and more specific terms, which would enable us to make our search more efficient and thorough. (In addition, the Thesaurus shows how many entries have been indexed under any descriptor in RIE and in CIJE, and this information can be helpful in determining how many citations we would be likely to get by looking under that descriptor.) Note that the Eric Wizard (discussed below) is essentially an online version of the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors.
In the age of computers, the role of the Thesaurus has changed. If your library requires or permits you to submit a request for a search for a library specialist to perform, then the role of the Thesaurus takes on new importance. Only if you give the specialist and appropriate set of terms will that person be able to give you useful output from that search. (In addition, it is essential to give the specialist a correct set of logical operators. The form supplied by the specialist often makes choosing these operators a straightforward task.)
On the other hand, if you conduct the search yourself, then you probably no longer need the hardcopy Thesaurus at all. The computerized ERIC systems offer on-line help that is every bit as good as that offered by the hardcopy Thesaurus - and sometimes better. {See the description of the ERIC Wizard in Walkthrough 3.3.}
In addition to CIJE, ERIC offers another important service through Resources in Education (RIE). This publication performs a service similar to CIJE, but it focuses on non-journal sources of information. For example, doctoral dissertations, reports on government funded projects, and papers given at conventions are often found in RIE. Such a report of a dissertation or a convention presentation may, of course, later be converted to a journal article and subsequently be indexed in CIJE, but in such cases the information will be available much sooner through RIE. A sample entry from RIE is shown in Figure 3.3.
Figure 3.3 An example of a non-journal listing from ERIC's database, typical of what is found in the printed version of Resources in Education.
Most of the information contained in an RIE entry is either parallel to that provided by a CIJE entry or is self-explanatory. A unique feature of the RIE entry is the EDRS price. This indicates how much it would cost to buy the document if you would wish to do so. As you can see from this example, the prices are coded. This is because even when prices change, there is a pattern; and you can find out the exact price by calling the designated toll-free phone number.
Instructions on how to order such documents can be found in the ERIC volume in which you found the entry or by calling the phone number. Many libraries that subscribe to RIE also purchase all the accompanying microfiches, and in such cases you can find the document by locating the microfiche and reading it on a microfiche card reader.
In many cases, researchers using the hardcopy version of CIJE or RIE will use the subject index to locate an article or research report. However, it is also possible to locate information by using the author index. In fact, since there are likely to be fewer entries under the author than under any given subject heading, it is easier to use the author index whenever the name of the author of the report is known. The author index is used in the same way as the subject index. Since many authors tend to have an area of interest and continue working in that area, it is often a good idea to look in the author index to find additional articles or reports by the same person who wrote a report that you found to be helpful.
An additional service provided by the hardcopy CIJE is a listing within each monthly issue of the tables of contents of the journals abstracted in that issue. By looking through these tables of contents (or by doing a computer search yielding the same abstracts by focusing on journal titles and particular years), you can find out what is being published in journals related to your field. This is an especially useful tactic for journals to which your library does not subscribe but to which you have access through interlibrary loans.
Computerized Searches of the ERIC Database
As we have seen earlier, ERIC is most often searched by computer. (See Walkthroughs 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3.) By doing a computer search of ERIC, we can obtain a set of abstracts that zero in precisely on what we are interested in. After reading the abstracts, we may wish to select for closer perusal the five or ten that would be of paramount interest to us.
Instead of searching through several separate hardcopy volumes of RIE and CIJE, the computer enables us to rapidly search through all the citations ever compiled by ERIC, or through some subset of these. For example, it would be easily possible for a researcher to find all the journal articles indexed by ERIC published since 1990 on the topic of computer-assisted instruction (CAI). It would be almost as easy to narrow this search to only those CAI articles since 1990 that also deal with science education or thinking skills. Searches that used to take several hours now can be conducted via computer in five or ten minutes. This value bestowed by the computer is so great that the hardcopy versions of RIE and CIJE, which used to be the most dog-eared volumes in most education libraries, have almost become historical curiosities.
Computerized access can be ontained in three ways:
Examples: Three Searches of the ERIC Database
If your would like to see an example of a search of the ERIC database, click on one of the Walkthroughs below. Each looks up the same information in a different form of the ERIC database:
Walkthrough 3.1: A Computerized Search of the ERIC Database Using My Library's Ovid DatabaseWalkthrough 3.2: A Computerized Search of the ERIC Database Using AskEric on the Internet
Walkthrough 3.3: A Computerized Search of the ERIC Database Using the ERIC Wizard
The lesson to be learned by comparing these three searches is that it is possible to gain useful information from any of the three approaches. I personally prefer the wizard approach (Walkthrough 3.3) and the Ovid approach (Walkthrough 3.1). By experimenting with these and learning how to use the built-in Thesaurus effectively, it would be possible to do extremely efficient electronic searches of the ERIC database.
When using indexing or abstracting services like ERIC, be aware of their shortcomings as well as their strengths. For example, articles are sometimes incompletely or even inaccurately indexed. For example, a computerized search for all research articles that deal with both science education and computers is not likely to derive a list consisting of all the research articles and only research articles on that combination of topics. Also be aware that there is a lack of quality control in the unpublished documents indexed in ERIC's RIE . That is, while many of the RIE documents are useful, there may be a reason why some of these documents are not published in more formal channels. {To be specific, they may not be worth publishing.}
ERIC and Its Database
ERIC Slide Show
http://www.accesseric.org/resources/eric_train.html
This site gives you a "quick tour" of ERIC.
Educational Resources Information Center
http://www.accesseric.org/home.html
This is ERIC's main home page. You can find the ERIC database at this site. However, in many cases it will be more convenient to use your own library (which probably has ERIC on an easily accessible disk) than to access it through the Internet.
Another easy way to access ERIC is through AskEric at
ERIC's main database can be accessed at
In addition to the overall ERIC database, various sub-components of ERIC have their own web sites, and ERIC often releases research and information bulletins on specific topics. For example,
The ERIC Resource Guides Online can be found athttp://www.cal.org/ericcll/faqs/rgos/
The ERIC Clearinghouse on Teaching and Teacher Education can be found at
ERIC Digests on Instructional Technology can be found at
http://ericir.syr.edu/ithome/digests.htm
{Digests on other topics can be found by consulting ERIC's main site.}
Using critical thinking to conduct effective searches of online resources by Sarah K. Brem, and Andrea J. Boyes,
http://ericae.net/pare/getvn.asp?v=7&n=7
This article from an excellent online journal discusses treating ERIC searching as an exercise in critical thinking can improve our use of online resources.
After reading this section, you can either
Click here to continue. (A discussion of the PsycINFO Database System comes next.)Go to a Walkthrough that demonstrates the use of the ERIC database to look up some particular information.
Click here to return to the beginning of this chapter.
Or click on a specific topic listed on this page.