Doctorate of Education in Policy, Planning, & Administration

A research guide for Ed.D. students.

Education Research in Library Databases

Tips for Using Databases

  1. Select two to three keywords from your research question.
  2. Utilize Boolean Operators AND, OR, and NOT to connect your keywords.
  3. Narrow your search results using database limits, such as publication date, source type, and subject terms.
  4. Evaluate your search results. Too many? Add more specific keywords and/or database limits. Too few? Use broader or fewer keywords. You can also try searching in another database.
  5. Repeat. Research is a cycle; you will likely need to move through these steps more than once to find sources.

Education Databases

Link Google Scholar to WCU

Higher Ed & Student Affairs journals

Looking for scholarly sources in the realm of higher ed and student affairs? Take a look at the specialized journals below! 

 

Active Learning in Higher Education
An international, refereed publication for all those who teach and support learning in higher education and those who undertake or use research into effective learning, teaching and assessment in universities and colleges.

ASHE Higher Education Report
Each monograph (def: book on 1 topic focus) is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education problem, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences.

Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education
This journal publishes papers and reports on all aspects of assessment and evaluation within higher education. Its purpose is to advance understanding of assessment and evaluation practices and processes, particularly the contribution that these make to student learning and to course, staff and institutional development.

College Student Journal
The journal publishes original investigations and theoretical papers dealing with college student values, attitudes, opinions, and learning. Topics include the areas of undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, and may also include selected contributions dealing with college preparation.

Educational Researcher
Publishes scholarly articles that are of general significance to the education research community and that come from a wide range of areas of education research and related disciplines.

Higher Education
Examines educational developments throughout the world in universities, polytechnics, colleges, and vocational and education institutions. 

Higher Education for the Future
This journal seeks to address a wide spectrum of issues including policy, pedagogy, and research in higher education.

Higher Education Management and Policy
The journal addressed leaders, managers, researchers and policy makers in the field of higher education institutional management and policy. Ceased publication in 2014.

Higher Education Pedagogies
Publishes innovations in the practice and theory of teaching and learning across all disciplines in higher education.

Higher Education Quarterly
Publishing research on policy, organization, leadership, governance, management and the professions in higher education.

Innovative Higher Education
Features descriptions and evaluations of current innovations and provocative new ideas with relevance for action beyond the immediate context in higher education. It also focuses on the effect of such innovations on teaching and students.

Journal of Advanced Academics
Features strategies for increasing academic achievement, programs that promote high levels of academic achievement and engagement, and programs that prepare students to engage in high-level and rigorous academics.

Journal of American College Health
Publishes information relating to health in institutions of higher education; clinical and preventive medicine, environmental and community health and safety, health promotion and education for college health professionals.

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education
Offers insights into theory and research that can help guide the efforts of institutions of higher education in the pursuit of inclusive excellence.

Journal of College Student Development
This journal is the largest and leading source of research about college students and the field of student affairs, publishes scholarly articles and reviews from a wide range of academic fields.

Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory, & Practice
Features articles pertaining to current and new theoretical constructs and current research on student retention and attrition in higher education

Journal of Higher Education
Publishes original research reporting on the academic study of higher education as a broad enterprise.

Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management
Informs and challenges researchers, teachers, administrators, policy-makers and others concerned with the past, present and future of higher education.

Journal of International Students
Publishes articles on international students in tertiary education, secondary education, and other educational settings that make significant contributions to research, policy, and practice in the internationalization of education worldwide.

Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice
Publishes articles on research and practice in the student affairs field in higher education, encouraging open and critical discourse across disciplines.

Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Publishes scholarly articles and provides a forum for the dissemination of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in higher education for the community of teacher-scholars.

Research in Higher Education
Publishes studies that examine issues pertaining to postsecondary education. Typically quantitative studies that address access and retention; student success; equity; faculty issues; institutional productivity and assessment; postsecondary education governance; curriculum and instruction; state and federal higher education policy; and financing of postsecondary education.

Review of Higher Education
Official journal of ASHE and considered a high-impact journal. Known for publishing peer-reviewed empirical research studies, empirically based historical and theoretical articles, and scholarly reviews and essays that move the study of colleges and universities forward.

Student Affairs Today
This source covers both legal guidance and practical strategies for handling your day-to-day challenges on campus, such as compliance, student conduct, liability, student success, risk management, mental health, crisis prevention, free speech and protests, students with disabilities and addictions, and much more.

Student Success
Publishes current research and innovative good practice about students’ tertiary learning experiences, which are supported by evidence. 

Studies in Higher Education
Publishes international research on higher education issues including institutional management and performance, teaching and learning. 

Teaching in Higher Education
Publishes research on the effects of teaching policy, practice and funding and societal expectation on higher education teaching and pedagogical outcomes.