ECD Assignment - Contemporary Families
Spartanburg Community College Library

Technology and the Family - Modern Influences on the Family 

You are researching several topics related to early childhood development, including the challenges of single parenting, the family of the 1950s compared to today's family, etc.

A current research topic in the library is “Modern Influences on the Family,”  which looks at TV, computer chat rooms, cell phones, other forms of technology that are re-shaping the way the family and its members connect and interact with each other. 

Research Hints 

All of these searches are done by searching the Gale Databasedatabases

 Television

Click on “Subject guide” do a search for “television and children” (click on the “full text” box to limit to full text). This will take you to a list of subjects with the words “television and children;” the first one is what you want.  Click on “subdivisions” to break this topic down.   “Analysis” and “psychological aspects” were both good ones to click on (I didn’t look at all of the subdivisions).  In InfoTrac, the articles are divided by type (magazine, journal, etc) so click on the different tabs to get to the different types of articles.

 Technology and society and family

Do as basic search and click on the "subject" button underneath the search box.

 You can also do this same search and click on "keyword". This gives you a broader search and more hits that are irrelevant--but it does get some good newspaper articles that are missed in the other search.  For example, under the "newspaper" tab there is an article called Is Technology Tainting Childhood?" that talks about the effect of internet, computer games, etc on family.

 Also, for finding articles about single parenting-- related subject terms in Gale Databaseare "single parent family"  "Single parents" and "single mothers" and "single fathers"

Spartanburg Community College Libraries
Central Campus |800 Brisack Road PO Drawer 4386, Spartanburg, SC  29305 | 864.592.4764 | Toll Free 866.542.2779 | Fax 864.592.4762
Cherokee County Campus | 101 Campus Drive PO Box 2189, Gaffney, SC  29342 | 864.206.2656 | Fax 864.206.2721

ask-a-librarian

Copyright © 2008 Spartanburg Community College. All rights reserved.
Last update 03/26/2008