English
202A: Writing in the Social Sciences
Research Resources
Annual Reviews ~ Articles ~ Books ~ Government Info ~ Reference Works ~ Statistics
Several databases of social science journal articles are listed below. Consult Find Articles By Subject to identify other relevant databases related to the social sciences.
CSA ARTICLE DATABASES
Note: To search more than one CSA databases at once, click Change Specific Databases on the main search page and then check the box next to the databases you want to include.
CSA search tutorial (Flash video)PsycINFO is the primary resource for psychology research and also covers education, organizational management, nursing, sociology, and more. (APA definitions of methodology search options)
Criminal Justice Abstracts provides an index and summaries of international journal articles, books, and governmental and non-governmental reports on topics in criminal justice such as Criminal Justice, Juvenile Delinquency, Juvenile Justice, Corrections, Penology, Policing, Forensic Psychology, and Family and Domestic Violence.
ERIC is the world's largest source of education information, containing over one million abstracts on education research and practice.
Sociological Abstracts covers primarily scholarly, peer-reviewed articles in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts provides citations, abstracts, and indexing of the international serials literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration/policy.
OTHER ARTICLE DATABASES
JStor offers the full-text (.pdf) of scholarly journal articles on a wide variety of subjects, including many in the social sciences.
Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) includes working papers from university research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, proceedings from conferences, books, journals and policy briefs.
Contemporary Women's Issues covers global information on women from scholarly journals, newsletters, reports, fact sheets, and pamphlets.
CQ Researcher offers in-depth explorations of current topics including social issues, politics, economics, the environment, education, science, etc.
Ethnic News Watch includes articles from ethnic, minority and native presses and a limited number of scholarly journals.
Gender Watch covers publications that focus on the impact of gender across a broad spectrum of subject areas including journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, booklets and pamphlets, conference proceedings, and government, NGO and special reports.
ProQuest covers 5,000+ magazines, journals, and newspapers.
Social Science Citation Index provides an index to English language periodicals in Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, Economics, Political Science, and Law with links to citing articles.
Getting the Full-Text of Articles
Many of the resources listed above include the full-text of the article. If a Get It button appears with the title of the article, click it to see whether any of the Penn State online resources offer the entire article. If so, link directly to that resource from the Get It screen.
If full-text is not available, click ILLiad on the Get It screen. The ILLiad request form will be automatically completed with the citation information. Just click submit. Generally articles ordered via ILLiad are available online within 24-48 hours.
The Cat - Penn State's online library catalog provides access to over 4.5 million items.
WorldCat includes over 38 million records cataloged by OCLC member libraries across the United States. Order materials from other libraries only if not available in the Penn State system.
Gale Virtual Reference Library contains searchable full-text of encyclopedias, almanacs, and specialized reference sources in many different subject fields.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences is the online version of the 24 volume encyclopedia published in 2002. Consult it for a definition and overview of the topic, often including the history and a review of relevant studies.
Annual Reviews includes scholary review titles published each year for 29 disciplines within the Biomedical, Physical, and Social Sciences.
FINDING GOVERNMENT INFORMATION
Congressional/Legislative Resources - University Libraries' guide & links to three major sources of government information: Congressional Universe, GPO Access, and Thomas. Includes a table comparing features of each.
FirstGov is a search engine for government websites.
To locate demographics, polling statistics, census information and other statistics, refer to the sources listed on the Statistics Research Guide.
FOR
RESEARCH ASSISTANCE CONTACT
Judy Sandt (jsandt@psu.edu)
Reference Librarian
Last updated May 2008