Articles - SOC 210 | Social Problems - LibGuides at Lebanon Valley College

Find Articles

The databases listed below are most appropriate for social problems.

A good starting point: Social Sciences Full Text.

Image: Public domain. US Gov't. Wikimedia Commons.

SocINDEX with Full Text
Provides access to articles found in over 800 social science journal titles.
Subjects covered include: gender studies, criminal justice, social psychology, racial studies, religion and social work.
Social Sciences Full Text
Largest social sciences database, providing access to over 4,300 social sciences journal titles.
Subjects covered include: anthropology, economics, geography, law, political science, psychology, sociology.
Gender Studies Database
Gender-related scholarship. Subjects include gender inequality, masculinity, post-feminism and gender identity.
Academic Search Ultimate
Covers virtually every discipline and subject area. Find here full-text academic journals, magazines, periodicals, reports, books and videos.
Criminal Justice Abstracts
Provides citations to journals on criminal justice and criminology. Covers crime prevention, forensic sciences, policing, and juvenile justice, from the early 20th century to the present.

Almost all of the library's databases will allow you to limit to academic/scholarly, or peer-reviewed journals. Limiting to academic/scholarly, however, is imperfect: You'll also retrieve professional journals. Some professors consider these scholarly; others don't.

Ask your professor to clarify this.

How can you tell what it is you found? You'll need to look for clues. None of these clues may be consistently applied--taken together, however, they can get you close.

Journal in the journal title. You can't apply this clue blindly-- Ladies' Home Journal is not scholarly.

Subject specific terminology or language within the article title.

High page numbers. Typically scholarly journals continuously paginate January through December. Thus, after the publication of the first volume, you'll see high page numbers. This is an important clue--probably the one you can count on most. Still, imperfect.

References or Works Cited within the article. Again, imperfect. Look for other clues.

Abstract is contained within the article (useful only if you can pull up the full-text of the article) Again, imperfect.

Authors identified within the article as having come from a university, college, or research facility. Imperfect. Look for other clues.

Still unsure? Check Ulrich's Periodicals Directory for the definitive word on whether your source is scholarly or general.

Image source: Syker Fotograf. GNU GPL. Wikimedia Commons.

Readers' Guide Full Text Mega
Covers articles from popular magazines on a wide variety of subjects. 1983- present.
Readers' Guide Retrospective, 1890-1982
Provides citations and abstracts to more than 3 million magazine articles published between 1890-1982. Covers a wide variety of subjects.

Access World News
Access over 14,000 regional, national, and international full-text news sources through the Newsbank Access World News Research Collection (2024 edition).
New York Times | Current
Full-text of the NYTimes from 1980 to the present.
Pictures, graphs, charts are not included. Includes the NYT Book Review from 1997 to the present, and the NYT Magazine from 1997 to the present.
New York Times | Historical
PDF images of the New York Times (1851-present) with the exception of the latest three years.
Wall Street Journal | Current
Provides full-text articles of the WSJ from 1984 to the present. Text only; does not include charts, pictures, graphs.
Wall Street Journal | Historical
Provides PDF images of the entire Wall Street Journal (1889 to 2003).