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SOSC 5110 - Social Science Research Design and Methods: Strategies & Techniques

This guide is designed to help students of SOSC 5110 complete their assignments

Strategies

These strategies are not "do it once in this order & be done". Instead, they are recommendations for approaches that are often done several times at different points in your research.

  1. Start with what you have been given
    1. Ideas, information, data,  themes, methods of analysis from lectures
    2. Ideas, information, data, themes, arguments, from readings
  2. Look for clues in your readings (syllabus)
    1. Main argument, findings  (in abstract? in conclusion?)
    2. Keywords, special terms?
    3. Important authors?
    4. References to other articles, books, statistics in assigned readings (for your follow-up)  = Classic Scholarly Method
  3. Use References from things you  research & find  = The Classic Scholarly Method)
    1. When you do research, you will find things cited in papers & books you read. You can then look those up and read them.
    2. You can then also citation chain forward (see what scholars used the article you found useful. after it was punblished)
  4. Think about the arguments & evidence from the readings and lectures and other info
    1. See if/how they apply to your topic
    2. What questions do they give you?   Start to search for answers or evidence that might lead you to your answer, your theory, your argument.
  5. Search for more answers or evidence (or questions!) in recommended  in PowerSearch or other search tools
  6. Use smart-search techniques in those search tools

1. Classic Scholarly method: Find References in Your Reading

When you do research, you will find things cited in papers & books you read.  You can then look those up and read them.

Example: I read a chapter in this e-book 

Ho, B.C. and Li. Q. (2013). Rural Chinese Women's Political Participation. In Z. Hao and S. Chen (Eds), Social Issues in China : Gender, Ethnicity, Labor, and the Environment (pp. 23-44.). Dordrecht, Netherlands, Springer. Retrieved from: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-2224-2

chapter example image showing words and highlighted reference

1. You decide to follow-up on the in-text citation as written in the article " In Tong's studies (2003) Chinese men fare better....".   So you go to the full reference below.

reference to: Tong, J. (2003). The gender gao ub political culture and participation in China. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 36(2) 131-150.

2. You then search for the article in PrimoCentral of PowerSearch - very generally - using the title

screen shot primo central search of gender gap political china - over 70,000 resuls

 

Results - 75,000, but the one you want is the top (thank goodness!). Then you read it. This may lead you  to more citations and useful resources.

 

A more efficient search would use advanced search with author = Tong + title= gender gap political china

screen shot of results of advanced search author is Tong and title words are gender gap political china

 

Citation Chaining - Modern Addition to Classic Method

The "classic method" allows you to search backwards.

Now modern tools also allow you to search forwards! You can learn more about Citation chaining in the Citation Chaining Guide & by watching the videos below

Citation chaining helps you quickly find related articles through citations. It is an essential technique to support your literature review process.

You can do backward and forward searching based on an article in hand.

◀◀  Backward searching

A "perfect" article you have in hand

 Forward searching  ▶▶
  • finds articles the author used. These articles are usually called: 

"References", "Cited Articles", "Cited Documents"

  • helps you track classical and foundational studies
  • finds articles who used this article. These articles are usually called:

"Citing Articles", "Citing Documents"

  • helps you track latest development on your topic
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