ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with psychology and education, sociology and social welfare, with some reference to politics, current affairs and economics, although as boundaries are notoriously difficult to draw in the social sciences it may stray from time to time into neighbouring fields. The social and behavioural sciences can be described as those which study the activities of human beings, individually or in groups, rather than natural phenomena or artefacts. National and geographical factors can greatly affect the relevance of information in the social sciences. The traditional subject disciplines are by no means the only option for defining the content of a database. An alternative approach, encouraged by the growth of cross-disciplinary studies, is to set up a database focused on one problem or area of interest, and draw relevant material from a range of sources and disciplines. Databases of government publications cover a wide range of subjects, but include much significant material for the social scientist.
