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SOCI 101 (McEntee): Projects

Hi all! This guide is intended to help you navigate your research for Dr. McEntee's class assignments. You should check course guides and assignment instructions for information about how many sources of what type you need. But each tab here is designed to help with that process. Those tabs include:

  • To begin a your research, you have to identify keywords to search with. Whether that be through concept or mind mapping or a table, the first thing you should do before you dive into sources is brainstorm different ways fo talking about your topic.
  • Critically Evaluate gives you some questions to ask generally of your resources to determine if they are of a good quality to use for your paper.
  • Semi-Scholarly Sources and Scholarly Sources break those areas down to give you options for databases and websites to use, as well as some evaluation techniques specific to each of them.
  • Citing Sources lists a couple of places to check your citation style, but also gives some guidance for using RefWorks to help manage your citations for your bibliographies. RefWorks is great for individual use, but it is also especially helpful for group work, as you can share a folder with all of your groups citations, each with a space for everyone to add notes.
  • Research & Writing Help provides you with ways to contact folks for help, including me as your Sociology Librarian!

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.

Unit 2 Test

 The test should include a researchable question about achieving sustainable relationships between human populations and the natural environment.  In preparation for your Project, your test will:

  • outline/describe a sociological issue that is 'global'
  • identify and describe both economic and social externalities AND identify at least some relationships among them. 
  • include identification of specific socio-geographic spaces in which sustainability is 'contested' (meaning EITHER current relationships in those spaces are unsustainable OR there is organized effort to achieve sustainability in those areas; it could be both). 
  • provide an 'overview' of what is 'known' (sociologically) about the issue with a focus on the particular aspects of it that YOU want to explore for your Project. 

Search for sources that allow you to: 

  • Illustrate externalities (whether social or ecological/environmental); make SURE you can explain how/why ecological/environmental externalities influence HUMAN sustainability
  • Illustrate/describe intersection of human systems with natural systems IN TERMS OF human sustainability 
    • both of the above should be 'addressable' at the micro, meso, and macro levels.
  • Illustrate differential 'sustainability' issues by region/socioeconomic region of the world (country or national income levels, continents, zones of the world-economy/system)
  • Summarize/provide overview of relevant sociological research/knowledge

Required Sources for Unit 2 Test:

  • 2 sociological sources 
    • Fairchild (from Tuesday)
    • one that you found
  • at least 2 semi-scholarly sources
  • at least 2 data sources 
    • This is more about labeling than finding 4 distinct sources.  Individual charts/graphs/tables may be used as data sources; if charts/graphs/tables are part of reports from International Organizations or government bureaus or newspapers, their original source may ALSO be counted as a semi-scholarly source.