Historical, Quantitative, or Qualitative?
- Historical
- Quantitative
- Qualitative
Need more help to tell the difference between qualitative and quantitative? This guide from Xavier lays it out in graph form.
Where to Find Articles
Each database is going to have a different focus and strength. To be succesful, you are going to have to try more than one of these.
- Academic SearchA general catch-all database. A good place to start, but don't forget it has a lot of non-scholarly stuff in it.
- JSTORAnother general database. This doesn't have subject headings and only searches full-text. The more words you search the fewer results you'll get.
- SocINDEXA sociology specific database, it contains just the scholarly articles about sociology and criminal justice topics.
- PsycINFOLooks and functions just like SocINDEX, but with a psychology focus. Remember, there is a lot of overlap between sociology and psychology topics.
- Business SourceTry this database for business-type articles.
- ERICWorking on an education-related research question? Try this education specific database.
- PubMedMedical database. Look for full-text. If the article isn't there, use Find It. Or Journal List to make sure we don't have it full-text elsewhere.
- SPORTDiscusLooks like Academic Search, but just has sports articles. Most of these you will have to use Find It to request.
- Health Source (Nursing/Academic Edition)Another health-based database.
How to Find Books
Form to fill out before next time
How to Proceed
Citation Tools & Managers
- Citation MachineCitation Machine is a basic citation generator that includes a variety of citation styles including but not limited to APA, MLA, AMA, SBL, Chicago, and Turabian.
- MendeleyMendeley is a citation management system that allows you to organize citations, store PDFs of articles, cite, and communicate with other scholars. It can be accessed via any web browser and downloaded as a desktop client. The web and desktop versions are meant to be used together.
Anatomy of a citation - APA
BEAM Spectrum
The BEAM spectrum is a way to think about how you can use sources for your project. Typically historical research uses more of the background and method type of articles. Evidence and argument typically fall under quantitative and qualitative. Use this spectrum to think about how you can use this research to answer your research question.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Adapted from Kristin M. Woodward & Kate Ganski's "What Could A Writer Do With This Source?"
Keywords
Research question formula
I-Spy Activity
Summarize the image in 1-2 sentences. Your goal is to describe this as if the person you're talking to has never seen this image.