Skip to Main Content

SOCI 101 (McEntee): Scholarly Sources

Assignment Reminders

From your instructor:

Each team member will contribute at least the following sources to the team project:
Individual contributions are assessed by the Annotated Bibliography/Reference List.

  • 2 NEW Data Sources (at least one of which is a map, graph, chart, or image to be used as a slide in the presentation)
  • 2 NEW Semi-Scholarly Sources, published within the past 2 years (2023-2025)
  • 2 NEW Sociological Sources, published within the last 10 years (2015-2025)
    • 1 of these Sociological Sources could/should be the Team Source that will be shared by all team members to provide the framework for your Part I & Part II assignments

NEW = Not used for previous course work

 

Remember that where you search will affect how you search. So, when searching a multi-subject database, using "sociology" as a keyword might be helpful, but in a subject-specific database like SocINDEX, "sociology" will be far less useful. Think instead about any relevant sociological theories that might be useful in a sociology database, but may be too specific for a database covering far broader topics.

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 (see above) 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 above in the Scholarly or Popular? box) 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.

Sociological Databases

Multi-Subject Databases

Article Databases: an A-Z List

You can search for databases by name or by subject.

Databases A-Z List

When and Where Can I Access Databases?

Databases are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can use them on or off campus. If you are using them from off campus you will be prompted to put in your SU username and password (the same one you use for Gull Net, MyClasses, or an SU computer).