Sociology and Social policy: Home

Search tips:

1. Choosing keywords. Try searching on alternative keywords if you don't get the results you expect.
2. Phrase searching. Try putting common phrases in quotation marks, e.g. "industrial revolution".
3. Truncation/wildcard. Put an asterisk at the end of the stem of the word to search for any letters which come after it, e.g. film* will find film, films, filming, etc.
4. Refining to ebooks. Use the ebook filter.

Supporting research at all levels Sage Research Methods brings you books, chapters, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos.  See Case Studies of real research projects and practice on Datasets (these can also be used for teaching).

The Methods Map can help those less familiar with research methods to find the best techniques.

More tips, videos and guidance available a the Sage Research Methods help pages.

The databases in the list below contain research, mostly links to journal articles. Choose a database appropriate for your specific topic. 

Search tips:

1. Choosing keywords. Try searching on alternative keywords if you don't get the results you expect.
2. Combining search terms. Combine concepts with AND. Combine alternative keywords with OR, e.g.  (film OR cinema) AND (horror or suspense)
3. Phrase searching. Try putting common phrases in quotation marks, e.g. "long term conditions"
4. Truncation/wildcard. Put an asterisk at the end of the stem of the word to search for any letters which come after it, e.g. stress* will find stress, stressful or stressed
5. Refining search. Refine your search using the filters available, e.g. date, language
6. Evaluating results. Read the abstract and subject headings to decide whether the article is relevant to your research.
7. Finding full text.  If you don't see a PDF link, look for the Find@Stir button  - this may take you to the full text. You can also download the LibkeyNomad browser plug-in, which will provide access to articles. If we don't have the article, see Step 3 below (If the library doesn't have the book/article).

Use these databases to find journal articles. For guidance about searching see our successful search techniques website.

It is important to critically analyse information before you use it in an essay, report or assignment. These websites suggest how to evaluate the quality of different types of information. For further assistance with this, please ask in the Library.