SOC 337U Prejudice, Privilege & Power: Sociological Abstracts
Core Sociology Database
- Sociological AbstractsIndexes citations to journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, and conference proceedings in the field of sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
Sociological Abstracts Search Tips
- Quotation marks searches the database for those words together as a term
- An asterisk (*) searches the database for that word plus any variants of the root word.
- Use the OR search fields to search for synonyms
- Use the limits to filter for a particular source type, such as "scholarly journals".
Get Full Text
Once you've identified an article in a database and you want to the full text, click on the green Find It @ PSU button to see if the article is available from journals in the Library (electronic and print). If you see an Online Access link, you can click to access the electronic copy.
Revising your Search
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:
*Low Income Groups;
*Political Action;
*Political Participation;
*Segregation;
*Neighbors;
*Working Class;
*Urban Population;
*Citizens