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SOCI 201 (McEntee): Assignment

Unit 2 Test Source Requirements

Remember for this assignment you are required to find the following:

  • 1 sociological source assigned as Required Materials for Unit 2, since Week 6 
  • 1 new sociological source
  • 2 new semi-scholarly sources
  • 2 new data sources.

Finding a Sociological Source

Sociological sources, what does that mean?

Dr. McEntee requires you to cite sociological sources. A sociological source needs to be a scholarly source and either A) written by someone with a degree in sociology/working in the field of sociology or B) published in a sociological journal. So how do we determine that? Say you have developed your keywords to search in a database. You have selected an article from the results list, and you have already determined (via the criteria in the Scholarly or Popular? box on the Critically Evaluate tab) that it is a scholarly source. Now it is time to determine if it is sociological.

A) written by someone with a degree in Sociology/working in the field of Sociology

Many databases have an authors' affiliations section for each article's record. It may indicate either their degree or that they work in a university's sociology department. You may also consider departments like cultural anthropology, human geography, or others mentioned in Dr. McEntee's course materials to be sociological in nature.

If none of the information is available, you can certainly take to a search engine like Google to see what kind of information you can dig up about an author.

B) published in a sociological journal

Any journal that has sociology (and no other discipline named) in the title or is published by the American Sociological Association (ASA) may be considered a sociological journal. Some big ones to note that do not have sociology in the title, but are indeed sociological journals, are Social Forces, Gender & Society, and Continuity & Change.

This guide was created to help you research for Dr. McEntee's SOCI 201 assignments. While it is directed at the Unit 2 test, you can continue to utilize it throughout the semesters for your research needs. The pages are as follows:

  • Assignment: this tab focuses on the Unit 2 test and the source requirements
  • Searching for Sources: this tab lists several places you can look for sources, broken down by semi-scholarly, sociological, and data
  • Critically Evaluate Resources: no matter what type of source you are looking for, you need to be able to evaluate the quality of the source. This tab helps you do so through the use of several infographics. Full descriptions for each infographic are available linked below the image.
  • Cite Sources: citation information on ASA, as well as information about the citation management tool RefWorks is available here.
  • Research & Writing Help: this tab links to places to get help, including chat, your librarian, and the Writing Center.