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Sociology

This is a guide to help students find quality sources when researching the social lives of people, groups or societies.

Keywords

What Is Your Research Topic?

Once you have made a decision, you should generate keywords. Keywords are search terms that you use when searching for information about your topic. The above video explains how you can write keywords. Watch it, then continue reading this section.

Let's pose an example: you're writing about the causes of suicide at a broad level. Your keywords could include:

  • suicide and poverty
  • suicide and isolation
  • suicide and substance abuse
  • suicide and cause

Background Research

When writing keywords or even starting sociological or anthropological research, it can be very helpful to get some background information first. A database like CREDO Reference is perfect for this task. Read an article or two about your topic so that  you become more familiar with it. This will make it easier to select keywords and to know if information sources that you find are actually relevant.

How to Search the Library's Discovery Tool

How to Search the Library's Discovery Tool

Most of the library's resources, including news articles, journal articles, videos, ebooks, and print books, can be searched through this single search portal. This video shows you how to use it.

How to Search eBooks

How to Search eBooks

We have two excellent ebook databases. These let you read full-text books online. The interfaces can be confusing, so I have included a tutorial video for each one.

The video above shows you how to search the ebook database titled EBSCO eBook Collection.

The video above shows you how to search the database ProQuest EBook Central.

The above video shows you how to search the database Gale eBooks.

APA Documentation

This is our video that introduces APA documentation. I urge you to watch the entire video carefully before starting to write your paper or annotated bibliography. It is much easier to cite correctly as you go along, rather than try to fix your documentation after you have written your paper. This is our complete APA guide, which goes into more detail about citing sources and formatting correctly.

It includes our sample paper. When you're writing a paper, you can model the formatting of your paper after this one. If you are unsure how to set up the formatting in Microsoft Word so that it fits the requirements for APA formatting, you could instead download this blank Word document that has the formatting already set up for you.

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