Assignment Two

Literature Search for Research Paper

If one of the "questions you are interested in" was handed back marked "feasible," make a tentative decision to use that topic for your paper.  If you do decide use this question, this assignment will be useful for your paper.

If none were so marked, you will need to find another topic for your paper, and, more immediately, for this assignment.  Think of another question on which to base this assignment.

This assignment will help you start finding literature related to your topic, and will ultimately help with your paper.

1.  Identify 4 "keywords" that at least partly characterize your topic (turn these in).

2.  Use these keywords to search SocAbstracts (and SocSci Search at LANL) for recent articles (1990 - present) that might be relevant to this topic.  It might help if you use the "and" feature to focus your search.

If your topic is not really sociological or criminological, search in either the general database Article1st, or in a specific database that seems best for your topic.

3.  Identify 8 journal articles that you want to look at (in the library or online).  Read the abstracts online to see if the article looks like it will be useful to you.

If possible, it is good to especially focus on three major journals:
            (1)     American Journal of Sociology
            (2)     American Sociological Review
            (3)     Criminology

This doesn't mean that other journals aren't useful; in fact much of the most interesting work appears elsewhere.  So it is okay if your search doesn't net articles in these journals.  But if you do get some hits on these journals, definitely take a look at those articles, because they are often intended for a broader audience and may be a good entry to a topic.

Again, if you are interested in some topic that is not quite sociology or criminology, this won't apply directly - other fields have other "flagship" journals.

Note that Zimmerman doesn't subscribe to every journal, so there may be some articles you want that aren't here - but also some that UNM doesn't get in paper form are available online.

Turn in:
   1.  Your topic and list of keywords (see #1 above).
   2.  A list of your articles.  For each one indicate whether it is a theoretical article or a study of some data set (which could be quantitative or qualitative).
   3.  Xerox (or get from the electronic version) and turn in the "discussion" or "conclusion" sections at the end of the each article.