Family Therapy Overview
Course Number: TH663M
Subject: Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy
Background Material
- Bigner, J. J., Wetchler, J. L., & ProQuest. (2012). Handbook of LGBT-affirmative couple and family therapy (J. J. Bigner & J. L. Wetchler, Eds.). Routledge.
- Carlson, J. (2017). The SAGE encyclopedia of marriage, family, and couples counseling. Volume 1-4 (J. Carlson & S. B. Dermer, Eds.). SAGE Publications.
- Lebow, J. (2005). Handbook of clinical family therapy. John Wiley.
- Miermont, J., & Jenkins, H. (1995, 2017 online edition). A dictionary of family therapy. Blackwell Publishers.
- Wampler, K. S., & McWey, L. M. (Eds.). (2020). The handbook of systemic family therapy. Wiley Blackwell.
- Volume 1
What is a library database?
A library database is an online searchable collection of information, often in the form of references to articles, books, and book chapters (but also newspaper articles, thesis, music, etc). These examples offer a glimpse of how databases are used.
Dissertation
Liepmann, T. W. (2022). Expanding the scope of competence and training for marriage and family therapy professionals: The application of bowen family systems theory with family businesses: A course framework (Publication No. 30241885). [Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Scholarly Article
Buckmaster, R., McNulty, M., & Guerin, S. (2019). Family factors associated with self‐harm in adults: a systematic review. Journal of Family Therapy, 41(4), 537–558. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.12232
Database searching tips
- Tutorial: Developing a research question: for graduate students
- Consider word variations and synonyms
- think about how others might refer to your ideas
- e.g, “self harm” OR “self injury” OR “self mutilatation”
Search Tactics
What is the tactic? | What does the tactic do? | Examples |
|---|---|---|
Phrase searching | Use “quotation marks” to find more than one term in a row. | “self harm” |
Truncation | Use an asterisk* at the end of a term to include multiple endings. (sometimes $) | trauma* trauma, traumatic, traumatically, traumatize, traumatized, traumatizing |
Boolean AND | Use AND to ensure that all terms appear in every search result. | AND homelessness |
Boolean OR | Use OR to ensure that at least one term appears in every search result. | “self harm*” OR “self injur*” OR “self mutilat*” |
Proximity | Use NEAR/n to search for terms within n words of each other (sometimes ADJ/n) | religio*NEAR/5 healthcare OR "health care" |
Tutorial: Better searching using AND, OR, NOT
- Employ search limiters (available limiters depend on the database)
- peer reviewed, article type, date
- e.g, in PsycInfo, can include: age group, population group, methodology
- Identify key publications and authors
- note citations, and cited references, repeated author names
- Document and track everything you do in the steps above
Books and ebooks
Start with known titles
- Sexton, T. L., van Dam, A., & Anderson, M. (2025). Functional family therapy: A comprehensive, evidence-based treatment for diverse communities. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000416-000
Search with Omni
- limit to "Books and eBooks"
- sign in to request from other Omni libraries
- use Scan on Demand for chapters or articles
Tutorials
Articles
Search in Omni
- limit to "Articles" and "Peer-reviewed journals"
- article content in Omni is not chosen or curated, but dumped in, i.e, it may not have everything on a particular topic.
Beyond Omni
Omni is a great place to start, and you may find all you need using this database. However, Omni only contains records for journal articles that Laurier subscribes to. Consider expanding your search using a subject-specific databases. Some databases helpful for this course include:
Tutorials
Finding scholarly articles on a topic
Other considerations
- You can "hand-search" journal publications
- There are other subject-based databases that might be relevant to your search area, such as Education or Sociology
- If you already know the title of an article, you can search for it in Omni
Family therapy journals
When you search Omni or a subject-specific database, you likely will be searching the metadata (author, title, abstract) of the important journals in this field. It can also be valuable to view the contents of specific journals to gain an understanding of current research, but to also be able to search the full text of each article in the journal. Some helpful titles in this field include:
Predatory journals
Dissertations and Theses
Dissertations and theses may be considered scholarly sources since they are closely supervised by a dissertation committee made up of scholars, are directed at an academic audience, are extensively researched, follow research methodology, and are cited in other scholarly work.
However, dissertations are still considered student work and are not peer-reviewed. Always clarify with your instructor as to whether you can include and cite dissertations and theses in your research.