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Lucy Scribner Library

Sociology

Sociology Databases

Additional Databases

Research in Sociology often crosses over and connects to other disciplines, so try some of these databases in related fields.

You can also try broader databases and search engines such as Google Scholar and Academic Search Ultimate.

What's an Empirical Article?

An empirical article (sometimes call an original research article) is a type of journal article where the author(s) have based their findings on some type of observation or experience (such as an experiment, case study, survey, focus group, field study, etc.).

Empirical articles will use particular headings to identify the different parts of the article. These often include:

  • Introduction
  • Literature or Literature Review
  • Methods or Methodology
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • References

These headings may be different depending on the discipline of the article.

Example

ASA Journals

While many of the journals from the American Sociological Association are indexed in the Sociology databases, you can also browse and search their full-text individually.

Section Journals

Search within a Specific Journal, Magazine, or Newspaper

Our Journal Search lets you search for any periodical (academic journal, magazine, or newspaper). It will tell you if we have access to the full-text of that publication, for what years, and in what databases. You can click on the database link to then browse or search within that specific publication.


Research Tips for Finding and Using Articles
References from an Article

Research Tip #1: Look at the Bibliography

If you've found a source that works well for your research, look at their bibliography. There's probably going to be a couple of sources that they've used that you should use as well.

Article with the Cited By tool circled

Research Tip #2: See Who Else Has Cited a Source

Google Scholar and many of our databases have a "Cited By" or "Times Cited" tool that lets you see what other sources have cited an article. If you've got a good article, see who else cited it. You'll probably find a couple of other sources relevant to your research.

The Subject Terms part of an article record from a library database

Research Tip #3: Look at the Subject Terms

Many of our databases will assign Subjects or Subject Terms to the articles, identifying the main topics of that article. Look at the Subject Terms to see if there are other search terms you should be trying in a database.