This database is the result of a systematic trawl for formal research literature and 'grey' literature on single homelessness, published in Britain since 1990. (The original review covered sources published between 1990 and the end of November 1999. This electronic version will be updated annually.)

Sources of material

A wide range of sources were used in the trawl for material, including: the Planning Exchange; university library databases; the British Library and National Library for Scotland; the World Wide Web; housing and social work magazines; and contacts with key homelessness agencies and research funders. Participants in national homelessness conferences were invited to submit material.

Selection criteria

For the bibliographic entries, all relevant items identified were entered into the database.

Out of that material, we then selected 200 pieces of material from 1990-1999 and 25 per year thereafter to be summarised in depth and included in the published research summaries. The questions that guided our selection for the summaries were as follows:

• How significant a piece is it?
• Are there other more robust/more recent/more comprehensive treatments of the same subject? (If a subject was well covered, only the most useful pieces of research were included. Some weaker studies were included if they addressed an area where there was little else. In addition, we tried to include a selection of small-scale, local studies.)
• How easily can users gain access to the piece of literature? (Obscure items that are very difficult to obtain were only included if particularly significant.)
• Overall, how useful is the item likely to be to the intended audiences, that is, homelessness practitioners, policy makers and research funders?