Research Studies, Literature Reviews

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Research Studies,Literature Reviews
Sociological Abstracts

• For SOCG 364 Quantitative Research Methods
• Charlotte Johnson Jones
• Reference Social Sciences Librarian
• Fall 2007

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A literature review

• What is it?
• Is a systematic and thorough examination of the
  research that has already been done on your topic
  or on the question that you propose to answer
  with your own research
• Is almost always the first step in a research
  project, thesis, or dissertation
• Is often the initial section in a research
  proposal or report
• Sometimes stands alone as a review article
• Why do one?
• To determine what research has already been done
  on your proposed topic
• To discover methodologies or models that have
  been used successfully (or unsuccessfully) in
  studying your topic or research question
• To refine your research question
• To establish your own credentials as a researcher
  with knowledge of the topic

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Popular magazine?Or scholarly journal?

• Articles in popular publications, such as
  Psychology Today or Time, may provide an overview
  of a topic, give you good ideas for a project,
  and/or be a good place to begin research
• However, the literature covered in the review
  should be from scholarly publicationsalso known
  as academic or peer reviewed journals.
• See Popular vs. Scholarly How to Tell the
  Difference at http//www.library.umw.edu/scholpop
  u.html

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A Search Model for Literature Reviews in the
Social Sciences

• State your research topic or question.
• Identify the keywords and/or key concepts in your
  topic.
• Brainstorm to create a list of synonyms or
  similar concepts.
• Use Boolean operators, nesting, and wildcards to
  create a search statement. (Check for accuracy
  in the database help.)
• Choose an appropriate database for your subject.
• Search.
• Cull the results for hits and clues.
• Modify the search and/or follow new clues
• Return to step 5 and repeat.
• Stop when the same results begin to appear again
  and again. Use other models, such as chaining
  footnotes and browsing bibliography items to
  supplement your survey.
• Adapted from
• Greenlaw, S. A. (2006) Doing economics a guide
  to understanding and carrying out economic
  research. Boston Houghton Mifflin
• Ackermann, E., Hartman, K. Searching
  researching on the Internet and the World Wide
  Web. Wilsonville, OR Franklin, Beedle
  Associates.

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State yourresearch topic or question.

• Im working with a program for young people who
  have run away from home. The director says that
  many of these teenagers are homeless . . . and
  thats why her office is in a homeless shelter.
• We want to do a study that identifies the
  factors that put young people at risk of becoming
  homeless and so Im starting by doing a
  literature review.
• I guess Im especially interested this question
  of whether all runaways wind up in homeless
  shelters. I wonder if its inevitable.
• So, maybe my research question is
• What is the correlation between running away
  from home and homelessness among teenagers?

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2) Identify the keywords in your topic.

• What is the correlation between running away from
  home and homelessness among teenagers?

Lets assume that if we can find information
about running away and homelessness and
teenagers, it will have to do with the
relationship among these concepts. So lets not
use correlation as a keyword.
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3) Brainstorm to create lists of synonyms or
similar concepts
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4) Use Boolean operators, nesting, and
wildcards to create a search statement.
Put each set of synonyms together using OR.
Nest or group each set of synonyms in
parentheses. Just as in math, the parentheses
tell the computer to deal with finding the
synonyms first. Put phrases in quotation marks.
Then link all three concepts together using AND.
(homelessness OR homeless) AND (running away OR
run away OR runaway) AND (teenagers OR
adolescent OR adolescent OR youth)
Ill take any results that are about
homelessness OR about the homeless OR that use
the adjective homeless AND the results must
contain the concepts runaway AND teenagers
Are there any words within each set of
parentheses that have the same root? Truncate, or
lop-off, the word at the root and add an asterisk
to the end. The asterisk is a wildcard that tells
the computer to search for all variations of that
word. Use the wildcard to search for the singular
and plural of a word also. Heres the
final search statement
homeless AND (run away OR runaway) and
(teenage OR adolescent OR youth)
Remember With OR you get more. On the other
hand for less use AND.
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5) Choose an appropriate database Sociological
Abstracts

• Covers topics in sociology, anthropology,
  demographics, and other social sciences
• Contains citations and abstracts for articles
  from more than 1,800 scholarly journals and for
  books, book chapters, dissertations, and
  conference papers
• Does not provide any full text articles but you
  can find them using UMWs Locate Journal Article
  feature
• Has information about articles published from
  1963 to present
• Is the database that most sociology professors
  consider to be crucial for research

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6) Search
From the Simpson Library Web page, Sociological
Abstracts is set to open for an Advanced Search.
This is designed to accommodate the kind of
complex search statements we have developed for
our topic.
This small note lets you know youre in the right
place.
Notice you dont need parentheses theyre
already in the search box. And an exact phrase
doesnt require quotation marks.
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7) Cull the results for hits and clues
Notice the descriptors. Descriptors, or subject
headings, help you to do much more precise
searches than keywords. Now we know that Soc Abs
uses the subjects Youth, Adolescents,
Homelessness, and Runaways. Lets modify our
search.
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8) Modify the search and/orfollow new clues
Notice weve used the exact language of the
Descriptors and chosen the Descriptors field from
the dropdown menu.
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Better!
We had 135 results. Now we have 80. Thats more
manageable. And we can choose the Peer Reviewed
Journals tab to limit to the 59 articles that are
strictly scholarly.
Notice this particularly relevant result. Click
on the title to see more about it.
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Notice the Abstract
This researcher used interviews, narratives, and
a relatively small number of subjects. The
research would be probably be characterized as
qualitative.
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Notice all the referencesat the end of this
record
Follow the Abstract link to see more about a
cited reference. Notice that some works have been
cited by other works. This can indicate the age
or the importance of a work. Works that have been
cited often may be seminal in the field.
Beware this quirk A large number of citations
may also indicate that a particular article or
author represents outmoded or discredited
theories and approaches in sociology. (e.g.
Talcott Parsons' work may be cited today as an
example of how NOT to approach social problems.)
Have questions or concerns about a source? Check
with your professor.
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Use the Locate Journal Article link
Use the Locate Journal Article link, found here .
. . or here. . . to figure out if this article is
available in full text in another library
database or in print, microfiche, or microfilm in
the library.
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Locate Journal Article
Locate Journal Article always opens the same kind
of pop-up box, specific to UMW. (If necessary,
unblock pop-ups!) The citation for the article to
be located is always at the top of the box.
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You may get several choices
Great! The article is available. These links
indicate that the article is available online in
full text in another database. Easiest choice?
Link directly to the article. Next best? Link to
the online journal and try to find the article.
Better than nothing? Search another database that
has this journal in fulltext.
If this note appears, it means that the journal
you need is available in print, microfiche, or
microfilm in the library. Click the link to
search the library catalog and find out more.
When you click on the Article, Journal, or
database link, you may have to play around a
little to find the article. Get stuck? Ask at
the Reference desk for help.
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If you have to search the catalog for print,
microfiche, or microfilm
Enter the name of the periodical not the title of
the article
Click Browse to search
Change the dropdown to Title of Periodical
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If the article is not availablethrough UMW
Libraries
If you see this, skip to Interlibrary Loan in
Step 2.
Notice the policies
For more help with the Locate Journal Article
feature, click here and watch our
video.
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Tips for a good literature review

• Start early
• Be thorough
• Use the UMW Journal Finder and Locate Journal
  Article features to obtain articles
  that dont appear in full text in the database
• Work smart
• Track down articles cited in other scholars
  references
• Caution read those articles yourself before you
  cite them
• Be flexible and creative
• You may not be able to find many articles that
  are exactly about your topic
• Include articles with a strong relationship to
  your topic or to one of the concepts in your
  topic
• Its up to you to discover intellectual
  connections in the body of work you are surveying

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The finishing touch complete citations

• Depending on the type of resource, you will need
  the items on this checklist
• Author(s)
• Date of publication Day, Week, Month, Year
• Title of periodical article
• Name of periodical
• Volume of periodical
• Issue of periodical
• Beginning and ending pages of article
• Database from which full-text article was
  retrieved
• Date on which it was accessed
• Title of book
• Title of chapter in anthology or edited book
• Beginning and ending pages of chapter in
  anthology or edited book
• Editor(s) of anthology or of book of individually
  authored chapters
• Place of publication of book or other
  non-periodical item
• Page number(s) from which you have taken direct
  quotes
• Publisher
• Title of Web site or blog
• Name of individual or organization responsible
  for Web site or blog

Yikes! Click here for a printable version of this
checklist in Word.
For more information and examples, see Citing
Resources in Print, Electronic, and Other
Formats at http//www.umw.edu/library/research/gu
ides_to_library_resource/citing_sources.php