Research Guides: MALS 131: Social Science Research Methods: Key Finding Tools

Key tools

Dartmouth Library Search (home page)
Broad search across our library catalog as well as many (but not all!) full-text article & book collections. Excludes searching bibliographic databases (other than our catalog).
Dartmouth College Library Catalog - Advanced Search
Search inventory of our library collection, database and periodical subscriptions, media.

Entires in our subject encyclopedias generally are written by scholars in the discipline and provide extensive overviews with bibliographies.

Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
Platform: Wiley Online Library
First published 2007, with ongoing updates.
Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology
Platform: Wiley Online Library,
Revised & expanded edition (2010)
Encyclopedia of Research Design
Platform: Sage Knowledge
Sage Publications, 2010
Encyclopedia of Social Measurement
Call Number: Baker-Berry Ref. H62 .E538 2005 (vols. 1-3)

Elsevier/Academic Press, 2005
Covers history, theory, and methodology (both qualitative and quantitative).
International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2nd edition)
This massive, broad-coverage work is great for in-depth overviews - particularly social theory.
Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia
Quick overviews of key theories and theorists within the field.
Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory
Platform: Wiley Online Library
Wiley, 2017
"interdisciplinary compendium of original entries focusing on the origins, evolution, and global development of contemporary social theory"

Just a few suggestions for handbooks on methodology.

Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed, 2020)
APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology
Call Number: BF76.5 .A73 2012 (volumes 1-3)
Decolonizing Methodologies (3rd ed., 2021) by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyond (2013)
Oxford Handbook of Multimethod and Mixed Methods Research Inquiry (2015)
The Politics and Ethics of Representation in Qualitative Research (2022)
The Process of Social Research (3rd ed., 2023)
Call Number: H61 .D588 2023

Try this subject search in our library catalog:
Subject: research AND (methodology OR handbooks), sorted by date.

Annual Reviews
Online suite of publications providing literature review articles for a wide range of social sciences & sciences, including Annual Review of Anthropology, Annual Review of Sociology, and more!

Creative searching in Sociological Abstracts & other databases

Most of our databases (bibliographic and full text) do not have specific filters or categories for review articles. You'll have to search terms such as "literature review", "review of the literature", etc.
But realize that most scholarly articles will include a brief lit review in the introduction. A recent article relevant to your topic can be a goldmine of bibliographic citations to additional research.

PsycINFO
Contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law.
Search filter "Methodology = Literature Review"
PubMed
PubMed is the freely accessible version of MEDLINE, which indexes approximately 5,600 scholarly journals published around the world, and some additional life science journals and books.
Search filter "Article Types = Review" (also try Meta-Analysis or Systematic Review)
Scopus
Citation database with multidisciplinary coverage of journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Indexes the journal literature and tracks article citation histories.
Search filter "Document Type = Review"
Web of Science
Citation database with multidisciplinary coverage of journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Indexes the journal literature and tracks article citation histories.
Search filter "Document Type = Review"
Proquest Dissertations and Theses Global
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses is the world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. The official digital dissertations archive for the Library of Congress and the database of record for graduate research. PQDT — Full Text includes millions of searchable citations to dissertation and theses from around the world from 1861 to the present day together with over a million full text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. Over 2.1 million titles are available for purchase as printed copies. The database offers full text for most of the dissertations added since 1997 and strong retrospective full text coverage for older graduate works.

The library home page's main search tool is a great place to start, but there are many additional tools that allow you to conduct more targeted searching.

Multidisciplinary databases

JSTOR
Provides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, demography, mathematics, biology, ecology, and other fields of the sciences, humanities, and social sciences.

Project Muse
full-text archive of selected university press books and journals in the humanities and social sciences.
ProQuest - search full database
We subscribe to more than 70 different databases through the ProQuest company. You can search across all of them simultaneously by starting at their main "Search.ProQuest.Com" page.
Sage Journals Online
Sage publishes the journals of the American Sociological Association, along with many other social science journals. Note we do not subscribe to all content Some journals are available through other services (check our catalog) or interlibrary loan.

Scopus
Citation database with multidisciplinary coverage of journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Indexes the journal literature and tracks article citation histories.
Web of Science
Citation database with multidisciplinary coverage of journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Indexes the journal literature and tracks article citation histories.

Wiley Online Library
Wiley publishes the American Anthropological Association's journals, along with the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and more. Warning: While Wiley allows you to browse a list of their anthropology journals, you cannot easily limit searches to that set of titles.

Key Social Science Databases

AnthroSource
Full-text archive of American Anthropological Association's journals, newsletters and bulletins.
Anthropological Literature
Bibliographic index to articles in journals and edited works received by the Tozzer Library, the anthropology library of Harvard University. Covers publications dating from the early 19th century to the present.
ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
Bibliographic database with broad coverage of education literature -- pedagogy, cognition, policy, and social conditions of school-aged populations. Includes scholarly journals as well as reports, lesson plans, and more.
PsycINFO
This is the main index to the peer-reviewed literature for psychology and neuroscience. It indexes citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines.
Sociological Abstracts
Citations and abstracts to international literature in sociology and related disciplines from 1952 to the present.

Need more? Try our other research guides

Have a particular journal title in mind?

Search for journals by title or ISSN
you can also search our main catalog, but this search is limited to records for periodicals (includes magazines and newspapers as well)
BrowZine
Browse eJournals by topic or title. See latest issues.

Locating specific citations

Citation Linker
Find out if the library has access to the full-text of a citation. Can use just the DOI or PMID.
Browser extension LibKey Nomad
Check out our guide for adding the browser extension LibKey Nomad. It can provide direct linking to full-text resources available in our library's collection!

If We Don't Own It

or if our copy is checked out...

BorrowDirect
Request books (only) from small, but strong, group of libraries (Ivies, plus Duke, Johns Hopkins, MIT, & U. Chicago)
Interlibrary Loan
Request articles, books, and other publications you need from a huge network of other libraries.