Sociology of Aging

Strategy 1

Develop important concept terms to help structure your research:

Instead of typing in a question into the search box of a database, structure your search using concepts (e.g. keywords of subject terms).

Example question: What strategies are most successful in transitioning older adults into an assisted living facility?

If we run this question in ProQuest Sociology database search, we get 0 results.

Try it yourself: go to a blank search page in ProQuest, 

• copy/paste the above question into the search box
• select peer-reviewed, Scholarly Journals as Source type
• select Articles as Document type
• then SEARCH

Searching by concepts looks like this:

older adults    
AND
assisted living
AND
strategies
AND
success 

If we break it down into its constituent concepts, we retrieve 10 peer-reviewed articles that seem to be focused on our topic of interest.

Strategy 2

Choose the best databases for your research

Visit our Sociology Subject Guide

• Start with the Sociology @ ProQuest bundle
• Also helpful: Web of Science
  • Use Web of Science's "Cited by" feature to find articles that cite your article
    • Once you find a relevant article in Web of Science, click the "Citations" link at the right side of the article's record to see what other articles cite it
    • These articles may have a critique of your original article in the Introduction or Literature review section

Tools

• Sociology-specific databases available on the Sociology Subject Guide

Techniques

• Use boolean searching to refine to precise results
  • See our short tutorial video Better searching using AND, OR, NOT (2:26)
• Use "exact phrase" searching, truncation, wildcards for precision results
  • " " - double quotes outside a phrase indicate searching for that exact phrase
  • * - truncation, indicating to search for letter variations, e.g. strateg* will find strategy, strategize, strategies; this is usually 5 characters minimum, including the *; different databases have different conventions
  • ? - a wildcard, finds only a single character; you can use multiple ??s too, e.g. wom?n = woman, women
    • See our short video tutorial Better searching using truncation
• Use filters to refine to precise results:
  • E.g. in ProQuest, filter your search results to a specific "Subject" found on the left-hand navigation bar
  • Filter to a specific "Document type" - articles, reports
  • Filter to a specific "Publication title" to find journals in your area of interest
     

• Read your article's literature review section (or the Introduction or Background; different terms may be used) find other works that your article critiques or is in dialogue with
  • Your article may build on other literature or theories and want to critique earlier work
• Follow citations forward/backward:
  • For example, Use Web of Science's "Cited by" feature to find articles that cite your article (forward citation)
    • Once you find a relevant article in Web of Science, click the "Citations" link at the right side of the article's record to see what other articles cite it
    • These articles may have a critique of your original article in the Introduction or Literature review section
  • Check your article's list of References for articles that have been critiqued in your article (backward citation)
• Use your textbook to see if any sub-fields or particular theories are written about, and note down multiple researchers or perspectives that are discussed
• If you are focusing on a particular theory or approach to an issue, do a database search to see if there are any "critiques" of that theory, approach etc.
   

When assessing any source for its credibility, you can use 3 basic criteria: Author, Publisher, and Documentation. 

1. Author
   1. Who created the information you're using? 
      1. Scholarly experts have credentials in a discipline specific field (e.g. a PhD degree). 
      2. Non-scholarly sources like Government reports may also have been authored by experts, but the report may not have been through a peer-reviewed process. 
      3. Media sources are usually written by journalists, not necessarily experts, and newspaper articles are not peer-reviewed.
      4. It's important to look for potential bias in authorship, e.g. who is funding the researcher or author? Are they receiving grants from organizations that might influence the conclusion of the research?
2. Publisher: 
   1. Who published the information? 
      1. Academic (e.g. University) publishers publish peer-reviewed journals and books.
      2. Governments publish reports, and are generally credible, but as above the reports may not have been peer-reviewed.
      3. Media sources can be published by various outlets. Most credible sources include information about who is publishing the information in question.
      4. As above, look for potential bias, e.g. who funds the publisher or the publishing of the information?
3. Documentation:
   1. Scholarly/academic sources are characterized by in-text citations, footnotes, and/or an extensive list of References or a Bibliography. 
   2. Government reports may or may not have extensive documentation, as in scholarly/or academic sources, but as above they are not necessarily part of the scholarly communication process.
   3. Media sources generally don't have much documentation for their claims. Internet news articles from credible sources may include links to other sources of data or information to back their claims.

For any information source you evaluate, if it is difficult to locate any information about the three criteria above, it's probably not a credible source you should use for your assignments.

For further details see the following 2 short videos:

Note: this video was created for Global Studies students, but the principles are general and interdisciplinary.

See our comprehensive guide to Creating Infographics, originally published for SY314