Methods

For a list of possible data sources (quantitative and qualitative) and advice on data collection, visit the Data page. For resources specifically on Qualitative Methods and Statistical Analysis, visit those respective pages. For advice on doing presentations and writing for public audiences, visit the Writing and Presentations page. For general teaching resources and advice, visit the Teaching page.

Research Design

General

Research Questions

  • Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research

    • Chapter 3: From Topics to Questions

    • Chapter 4: From Questions to a Problem

  • Robert L. Alford, The Craft of Inquiry

Literature Reviews

Software for download

Finding sources for literature reviews

Advice on writing literature reviews

  • VCU Libraries: Sociology Research Guide (links to databases)

  • Shira Lurie, "How to Read a Book in Two Hours or Less"

  • Lynn White, “Writes of Passage: Writing an Empirical Journal Article”

  • Howard S. Becker, Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article

    • Chapter 8: Terrorized by the Literature

  • Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research

    • Chapter 5: From Problems to Sources

    • Chapter 6: Engaging Sources

  • Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say / I Say

    • Introduction: Entering the Conversation

    • Chapter 1: “They Say”: Starting with What Others Are Saying

    • Chapter 2: “Her Point Is”: The Art of Summarizing

    • Chapter 3: “As He Himself Puts It”: The Art of Quoting

    • Chapter 7: “So What? Who Cares”: Saying Why It Matters

    • Chapter 17: “Analyze This”: Writing in the Social Sciences

  • David R. Krathwohl and Nick L. Smith, How to Prepare a Dissertation Proposal

Using Google Scholar

Below are instructions on how to use Google Scholar to find peer-reviewed journal articles. Consult Cabell Library’s Sociology Research Guide for other useful databases.

  1. Go to http://scholar.google.com. You may need to access it through the VCU Libraries page and/or use the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client (downloadable for free from HASTech) when working off-campus.

  2. Click on the hamburger button (options button) in the upper-left-hand corner, and select the Settings icon (the gear button) in the upper-right-hand corner of the menu pane. Click on Library links in the menu on the left. Type in Virginia Commonwealth University in the text bar. You should see a checkbox for Virginia Commonwealth University – Get It@VCU. Check the box. Then click on Save at the bottom. Now you will see links to Get It@VCU when you do searches on Google Scholar. Clicking on those links will take you to the articles and will normally allow you to read them in full (you will have to log into your VCU account at some point if you haven’t already). If this step in the instructions is unclear, visit http://guides.library.vcu.edu/google/scholar for more guidance.

  3. Now you can search in Google Scholar from the scholar.google.com page. If you’re looking for a specific article, you can put the text of it in quotes—e.g., "Show the animal: Constructing and communicating new elite food tastes at upscale butchers shops"—and it will locate articles with that exact phrasing. Once you locate an article, click on the link that will appear on the far right of the title. Sometimes the link on the right will say Get It@VCU, which means you have access to it through VCU. Other times, the article will be located on another site on the web, which will be listed in the link. And sometimes there will be no link, which often means the article can’t be downloaded for free. If there is a link, click on it; if there is no link, try clicking on the title of the article.

  4. The Get It@VCU link will normally take you to a VCU Libraries page that has a box at the bottom with one or more links to the article’s text. Click on any link where you see the words Full text available at:. Regardless of whether you go through Get It@VCU or another Google Scholar link, at this point you will normally be taken to the journal’s website or a repository of articles, where you can read the text and/or download a PDF of the article. Follow the instructions on the website. If the site you visit wants to charge you money to view the article, you may not have logged into your VCU library account properly (or, the article isn’t available through VCU’s databases, in which case you may want to look for a different article).

    • You can use the same techniques you use in Google’s regular web search in Google Scholar. For instance, you can use a hyphen (-), which will exclude a particular search term (sociology –"political science" would list all the articles that include the word “sociology” and do not include the phrase “political science”), and OR, which will find articles with either of the two search terms and not limit itself to articles with both (apples OR oranges would list those articles with the word “apples” along with those articles with the word “oranges,” not just those with both “apples” and “oranges”; note that OR here needs to be capitalized).

    • Advanced Search: For more targeted searches, click on the hamburger button in the upper-left-hand corner of the scholar.google.com page. Click on the link for Advanced search at the bottom. Enter whatever terms you wish in the fields provided. Note that you can search by title (choose the option under where my words occur for in the title of the article), by author (use the field Return articles published in), and by the date (use the field Return articles dated between). Instead of using the Advanced Search menu, you can just type the relevant search operators into the search bar. For instance, you can use author: and intitle: (such as author:Ocejo or intitle:"Show the animal"), which will search for the text in the article’s author field or its title field, respectively. This is more targeted than just using quote marks; for example, intitle:"Show the animal" will find just articles with that title and will exclude studies that mention this article in their citations/bibliographies. Use source: and site: to find articles in a particular journal or website, respectively (such as source:"annual review" or site:nber.org). You can use hyphens (-) to exclude items with any of these terms, too.

    • See the many Google Search and Google Scholar guides online for more information on how to search for scholarly articles and other sources. You can also refer to this list of search operators (which can be used in Google Scholar as well as Google's other search engines).

  5. You normally want to find peer-reviewed journal articles. To determine whether the journal for the article you found is refereed, use the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory, which is accessible through the VCU library site. In the search bar, search for Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory and click on the link that appears at the very top of the page under the heading Related Databases. Once in the Ulrich’s database, search for the name of the journal. If it is peer-reviewed, in the search results you will see that the journal has a referee icon in the third column.

  6. To determine if the journal is well-cited within your field, you may want to check its impact factor in Journal Citation Reports, which is accessible through the VCU library site. In the search bar, search for Journal Citation Reports and click on the link that appears at the very top of the page under the heading Related Databases. Enter the name of the journal in the search box and then click on the link that appears below the search box. The top sociological journals, American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology, had 2018 impact factors of 5.391 and 4.458, respectively; less well-known sociology journals can have impact factors lower than 1.0, but the journal should be mentioned in Journal Citation Reports if it is an influential journal. You can also see a list of sociology journals sorted by impact factors by clicking on Categories on the bottom of the landing page, then clicking on the Social Sciences, General, then clicking on Sociology in the menu that opens up, and then choosing an index (normally you will want to choose Social Sciences Citation Index, SSCI).

Using Perusall (for collaboratively annotating PDFs and other documents)

  1. Go to perusall.com and click on Log In the upper-right-hand corner.

  2. You can choose the Sign in with Google option to sign in with your VCU email account and password. (Or select whatever sign-in option you prefer.)

  3. Enter your email address and click on OK at the bottom. (You can review the terms of service and their privacy policy on this page.)

  4. Click on Create or enroll in a course.

  5. Click on I am a student.

  6. Enter the Course code that your professor provided to you (for example, CHEN-5GQVH).

  7. Click on the Assignments tab at the top of the page and then click on the assignment that you wish to work on.

  8. To comment on the document, highlight text by left-clicking and dragging over the words. A comment bubble will appear on the right-hand side of the screen. Enter your comment in that bubble. Click Enter when you are done, and the comment will be saved.

  9. To delete a comment, click on the trash can symbol right under the comment.

  10. To comment on someone else's comment, click on that comment and write in the bubble that appears under their comment in the right-hand window.

Using Zotero (for citations management)

  1. Go to Zotero.org and download both the desktop application and the Zotero Connector for your particular browser (Chrome and Firefox are supported). Install the desktop application and the browser connector.

  2. Run the desktop application and go to Edit > Preferences. Click on the Sync button at top. If you haven't already, click on Create Account and set up an account. Then go back to the same page and log into your account.

  3. To add a citation to your library, visit any webpage for that citation (such as its library page, its Amazon page, etc.) and click on the Zotero button that should have appeared to the right of the address bar in your browser after you installed the Zotero Connector. It will automatically save the citation information to whatever folder you choose in the menu that appears. (You can change that folder in the menu, and choose the More... option for the full list of folders.) You can create your own folders in the Zotero by clicking on the folder button in the top-left corner of the desktop application (or, right-click on an existing folder and select New Collection). If the citation information you're finding with your searches isn't very good, you may have to input the citation manually. To do so, go to the Zotero desktop application and click on the green circle with a plus sign at the top of the page. Choose the appropriate citation type (Book, Journal Article, etc.) and then enter the citation information in the right-hand pane.

  4. Once you have created the citation, you can insert it into a Google Doc (here is more information on integrating Zotero into word processors, including Word and LibreOffice). If you open Google Docs in the same browser, a Zotero menu should not appear alongside the normal File, Edit, View, etc., menus. Go to the place in the document where you want to insert the in-text citation. Then select Zotero > Add/edit citation. You will need to log into the email account corresponding to your Zotero account and then choose the style of citations (for instance, American Sociological Association (ASA) 6th edition).

  5. A Zotero search bar will appear. Search for the citation you just added to Zotero using whatever keywords you wish. Select the correct citation out of the search list that will automatically appear as you type. You can keep adding more citations if you wish to include multiple in-text citations. You can also click on individual citations and check the box Omit Author if the author name has already been mentioned in the text and you just want to include the publication year. When you are done adding citations, click Enter from anywhere within the Zotero search bar and the citation will be inserted into the text.

  6. To automatically insert the bibliography at the end of your paper, click on where you want to insert it first. Then select Zotero > Add/edit bibliography. The full bibliographic information for any in-text citations within that Google Document will be pasted into the document.

  7. Note that you can edit the bibliographic information for any citations in the Zotero desktop application or website. For those edits to appear in your Google Doc, however, you may need to select Zotero > Refresh from within the document.

  8. If you wish to pull citations from a shared Zotero Group, you will need to be logged into the Zotero desktop application using the right email address as described in Step 2. Note that you may need to close the application and reopen it in order to see the shared Group appear in the left-hand pane of the desktop application. To create Zotero groups, you should log into your account in Zotero.org, click on your profile, and then click on Groups in the top menu. Then click on Create a New Group at the top.