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*SOCI 1160 Intro to Social Problems (Salcedo): Finding Empirical
Research Articles

Remember that while these databases will let you limit your search to Peer-Reviewed/Scholarly/Academic Journals, they don't let you limit to specifically *EMPIRICAL* articles - you'll have to use the tips you learned from the Empirical Research tutorial to discern for yourself whether an article is empirical or not. And always remember you can ask your instructor or your librarian for help as well. :-)

Getting to Articles from Databases

Getting to Articles within Databases

If there's not a direct linked full text version of the article appearing in the results record:

1: Look for a "Full-Text" or "PDF" link that will take you directly to the article. If yes, great. If not, go to #2.

2: Look for the FINDIT @ GSU button. Click on it. If the journal title shows up, click the link to see what the online availability is. If not, go to #3.

3: If you see a message indicating no electronic full text is available and also indicating the library doesn't have it in print, go to #4.

4: Request the article you need through interlibrary loan - typically arrive within 1 day, so definitely worth trying!

Getting to Articles from Citations/References

Linked here are steps for searching whether the library owns the journal in which the cited article was published.

Library Databases

The below databases are a good place to start searching for empirical articles: 
  • Academic Search Complete - do a search, then to the left of the results click the Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals to limit your search to peer-reviewed/scholarly journals.
  • Sociological Abstracts - click the Peer Reviewed checkbox under the search field to limit your search to scholarly journals.
  • Google Scholar - To see the fulltext links for GSU: On Google Scholar main page, click More and then Settings in top center of screen, then at next screen click Library Links, search for Georgia State University, checkbox Georgia State University - FullText @ GSU. Then when looking at search results instead of clicking the article title to try to access it click on "More" and then click the FullText @ GSU link to be routed through GSU-access.

^^^^^ The Library has many more databases than these! To find other databases to search, check out our A-Z list, other research guides related to your topic, or consult with Mandy about what might be best to search for your topic.