Political SOCIOLOGY Theory

Tools for Locating Scholarly Research

Identifying scholarship:

· What is “peer review” research?

· Anatomy of an article and its distinctive features: look for an “abstract” (this is a key sign that it is peer-reviewed academic research)

Step 1: Search Broadly in Databases

· Library databases: Databases can be organized by subject and frequently contain scholarly journals, exclusively. Others have a mix of scholarly journals, popular magazines, newspapers and other material. In many of these databases, you can limit your search to scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals.

· To find scholarship published in the discipline of sociology and the social sciences, I encourage you to conduct searches in the following databases.

· From lib.tcu.edu, click on “Databases”:

· SocINDEX with Full Text

· Sociological Abstracts

Step 2: Search Specific Journals

· Academic journals can be broad in scope or can focus on particular sub-fields of disciplines and different journals have different levels of intellectual rigor and impact. General journals in the discipline of sociology include:

· American Journal of Sociology [https://www.jstor.org/journal/amerjsoci]

· American Sociological Review [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/asr]

· Social Forces [https://academic.oup.com/sf]

· Social Problems [https://academic.oup.com/socpro]

· Annual Review of Sociology [provides overview of sub-fields within sociology – very helpful for finding a literature review about a topic; https://www.annualreviews.org/journal/soc]

· As you refine your topic, it will be helpful to search in specific journals that relate to your area of study. Some journals that are important for the studies related to politics and social groups include:

· Critical Sociology (good for research about capitalism) [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/crs]

· Politics & Society [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/pas]

· Ethnic and Racial Studies [https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rers20/current]

· Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power [https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gide20]

Step 3: Other Appropriate Sources

· Books: A primary mode of disseminating research findings in many disciplines is through books. It is therefore important to not exclude books from your search. One way to begin looking for books is to utilize Worldcat [https://www.worldcat.org]

· Governmental Reports: Many governmental reports exhibit rigorous research methodologies. For the topic of gender and a policy like Title IX, publications from the Department of Education [https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/landing.jhtml?src=ft] may be useful.

· Non-governmental Reports: The Chronicle of Higher Education is a higher education journal that often publishes studies related to students, faculty, and other issues in the area of higher education. You will likely find articles related to issues of Title IX on college campuses here [https://www.chronicle.com]

Useful tricks:

· Search Tool: utilize * to find more sources on a subject matter by keeping the language broad and inclusive (ex: rac* instead of race or racial)

· Look at reference lists to locate important texts that might be relevant for your work.