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Sociology

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What's a Database?

Article databases contain information about articles, and often include the full-text of the articles as well.

While searching our discovery service will find articles for you, databases allow you do more controlled and precise searching.

Sociology Journals

You may be asked to find articles that are from sociology journals. Searching in a sociology database, like Sociological Abstracts, is a good place to get started, but not every journal in that database is sociological. (There are many journals that focus on social work or psychology, for example).

Here are some tips for evaluating journals:

  • Check the journal title. Sometimes it will be obvious if it is sociological or not:
    • Sociology of Health and Illness - a sociology journal
    • American Journal of Community Psychology - a psychology journal
  • Search for the journal title in Google to go to the journal's homepage. Most journals will have an "about" section that indicates what disciplines are covered by the journal.
    • Journals about sociology may use different key phrases, such as "social interactions," "social structure," or "society."

There is not a simple checkbox you can select to limit yourself to sociology journals, so make sure to give yourself time to think critically about your sources.

Specialized databases for finding articles in Sociology