How do you go from a research interest to a complete resaerch project? This question will overview some skills you can use in surveying the relevant literature and developing a search strategy.
A literature review is a summary and synthesis of scholarly research on a specific topic. It should answer questions such as:
Learn more at the full guide: Literature Reviews
How do researchers in your discipline approach the topic you'd like to investigate? Before diving into case studies, working papers, and other specific evidence, it may help you to take a step back and look at what we call background resources. These include:
Below are some specific places to start with sociology research:
Did you know that you can vastly improve your ability to find key relevant sources by employing a keyword strategy? Keywords are the specific words you identify as useful for investigating your research question, and the words you often put into database searches. But there's more nuance in finding, refining, and experimenting with keywords than you may expect.
Below is a quick video tutorial (6 minutes) about search strategy, and a link to our full guide for learning more.
Note: This section is still in-progress and based on the work of our talented colleague, Dr. Leo Lovemore!
The Brown University Library facilitates and supports critical research practices that ask how bias, power, and uneven access to resources are at work in the labor of scholarship.
Consider reflecting on the following set of questions and resources to develop and integrate critical perspectives into your research plans:
Key resources for learning more:
"Why Citational Practice?" Teaching Citational Practice.
Shanelle E. Kim, "The Paths We Were Told To Follow" A Citational Practice Worksheet for Students." Teaching Citational Practice 1 (2021): Progressive Pedagogies for Humanities Research and Citation.
Annabel L. Kim, “The Politics of Citation.” Diacritics 48, no. 3 (2020): pp. 4–9.
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