SOC 397 Social Research Methods: Sociological Abstracts & SocINDEX

Search Terms

• Brainstorm a list of possible search terms related to your topic first.
• One feature specific to disciplinary databases is subject headings. 
• Subject headings are the official term that database uses for a given topic or population. Make note of subject headings related to your search, and revise your search terms making use of these to find relevant literature. 

• Be flexible and revise your searches as needed. It's helpful to write down what terms you've used, or save your search history. 

Searching Tips

Most all databases have similar search functionalities. 

• Quotation marks searches the database for those words together as a term; for example, "social identity".
• An asterisk (*) searches the database for that word plus any variants of the root word. This is called truncation; an example is using the search term work* will provide results that include work OR worker OR workplace, OR worksite. You can also use this for the beginning of the term; *camp will search for camp OR encampment. 
• Use the OR search fields to search for synonyms; for example, consider searching for discrimination OR bullying OR harassment. 

An example of using these search functions in Sociological Abstracts: 

When starting out on your search, it's important to review your results and identify ways that you could improve upon your search. Revising your search may include: 

• if you are getting too many results, identify a more specific aspect of your topic that interests you, and use this more specific term in your new search
• if you are getting too few results, you might need to broaden your search terms. 

Another way to revise your search is to utilize the language of the database. Subject headings are terms assigned to each citation in the database to capture what it's about, no matter what particular words the author might have use. For example, the article: 

"NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORKS, SOCIAL CAPITAL, AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: THE RELATIONSHIPS REVISITED" has the following subject headings assigned: