SOCI 225 (McEntee)

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 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 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.

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

• 2 new sociological sources (published in the last 10 years)
• 2 new semi-scholarly sources (published in the last 2 years)
• 2 new data sources (at least one of which is a map, graph, chart, image used as a slide in the Power Point presentation)

Starting Research Question: "How does media affect voting in young people?"

Starting Keywords: media; voting; young people

Brainstorm some of the different ways people can think about these concepts and keep track of all alternate keywords you can identify. Keep in mind, alternate keywords can be synonyms, broader, or more narrow terms, and

For example:

Media might generate a list like:

• television
  • news
  • talk shows
• internet
• social media
  • twitter
  • facebook
  • instagram
• social networking

Voting might generate a list like:

• campaigns
• political campaigns
  • advertisement
• election
• vote
• civic engagement
• polls

And young people might generate a list like this:

• students
  • college students
  • university students
  • undergraduates
  • high school students
• youth
• young adults
• Gen Z / Millennials, etc.
• 18-24 years old

Television is one type of media, and a talk show is one type of television program; the terms get more narrow. Civic engagement is a broader category under which voting might rest. And youth is just another way of saying young people. All of these are legitimate ways of coming up with alternate keywords. What works well in one database, might not work in another. You might want to use these terms in different combinations too!

You can use the worksheet below to explore keyword development for your own topic.